Lincoln Child

Gosh, I hate to say this, but Angel of Vengeance is strikingly average. Preston and Child rank in the top five of my favorite authors and I put them on a pedestal. In addition, I have read every book in the Pendergast series so I feel qualified to share my thoughts about this novel.

The beginning will be a mess for those who didn't read the previous book (The Cabinet of Dr. Leng) because it picks up right where the last one left off. Pendergast, D' Agosta, Constance, and Diogenes all find show more themselves apparently trapped in the 1880s when the portal they used to get to that time has been destroyed. As begun in the previous book, the quartet has traveled back in time to stop the evil deeds of distant Pendergast relative, Dr. Enoch Leng.

With that said, there's very little action in the first third of the book creating a level of excitement equivalent to that of putting out the family dinnerware before supper. Because of this, the book is a slog to get through. It's only after the quartet devise a plot to finally get at Leng (taking place in the last half of the story) that the book begins to get interesting. It's actually pretty riveting in the last third of the book, but that's not enough to make this more than a 3 star story for this reviewer.

I feel like I'm a little tough on the authors (and I'm sure that many readers will disagree with me) but if P & C would have spent more time on plot development and less on throwing out their $5 words interspersed with the vernacular of the 1880s, then this would have been a better story.

This book brings an end to the Leng trilogy, so hopefully, better storylines are ahead for Pendergast fans. In this reviewer's humble opinion, P & C need to bring back more of the original snarky, aloof, and mysterious Pendergast, and less of the warm and relatively fuzzy Pendergast from the past 4 or 5 novels. I'm hopeful that the series isn't running out of steam, but I'm worried.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me an ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review. show less

I picked up this collection from the local public library in order to read Hodgson's "The Voice in the Night." Since I had already read half of the contents under other covers, I decided to go ahead and finish the remaining ones. Dark Company is a sort of "best of the best" anthology. Although the subtitle boasts "Greatest Ghost Stories," the selection really ranges across supernatural horror, regardless of ghosts.

Editor Lincoln Child identifies probably the ten most lauded American and show more English authors of the genre from the 19th through the early 20th century, and then offers a "best" story from each. Many of these are obvious: Poe's "Fall of the House of Usher," Machen's "Great God Pan," and Blackwood's "The Willows," for example. The stories are arranged in some sort of chronological sequence. In each case, Child gives the birth and death dates of the author, but he omits the (to me) more relevant and interesting date of the first publication of the story in question. A one-paragraph introduction to each story characterizes the author and gestures at situating the story in his oeuvre.

The Hodgson is a remarkably brief and effective piece, notable for the naturalism of its horror, along with a certain shocking perversity of the outcome. After that, I was most interested to read "The Green Tea" by Sheridan Le Fanu and "The Beckoning Fair One" by Oliver Onions, two esteemed authors that I hadn't yet read. In the case of the former, my cinematically-educated mind couldn't help but picture the protagonist Dr. Hesselius as Peter Cushing, with Christopher Lee as the Rev. Mr. Jennings. The Onions story starts off in a somewhat Machen-like mode, but the final result is comparable to the blackest work of H. Russell Wakefield (an author who could easily have been the eleventh of this company).

The Lovecraft selection that concludes the book is "The Shadow Out of Time," a perfectly representative piece to exhibit some of the features that make HPL distinctive, but not often held up as his best. In this case, Child's introduction to the book and his preamble to the story both exhibit a Derlethian emphasis on the "Cthulhu Mythos" as a carefully-programmed system -- a forgivable critical error in 1984, I suppose.

As a library book giving access to the canon of supernatural horror, Dark Company fulfills its task quite economically, in contrast to the short-fiction omnibi that now seem to be the vogue. It is possible to create a satisfying volume out of just ten stories, rather than fifty! show less

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's Nora Kelly series has turned into a must-read for me whenever I want some high-octane fun-- although I do wonder if Nora will ever turn Corrie down when she asks for help because, every time she says yes, she finds herself in a big mess.

I fell in love with New Mexico on a visit a few years ago, and I always look forward to what bits of that state's history these two men will use to fuel their story. Although Nora does help Corrie with the Dead Mountain 9 show more investigation, she finds herself pulled away by her impulsive brother Skip who runs afoul of a corrupt sheriff when the two help people from the Isleta Pueblo repatriate ancient remains found in the cave. Learning more about NAGPRA (Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act) laws was very interesting, and I enjoyed how Skip was extricated from his dire situation.

The major storyline involving the Dead Mountain 9 uses Kirtland Air Force Base as a possible focus for Corrie's investigation. Watching Corrie and her new mentor, Agent Sharp, unravel all the knots surrounding the coverups of what happened during that blizzard fifteen years ago was a blast. I love how Preston and Child's minds work!

No matter how good the story, it wouldn't really work if the characters weren't up to the same high standards, and they are. Archaeologist Nora Kelly is the more seasoned of the two and keeps Corrie's worst impulsiveness in check. She also has valuable knowledge to bring to the table. Neither woman is someone you want to mess with when you're in the wrong. Nora's brother Skip is the class clown, the comic relief. Will he ever learn when to keep his mouth shut? You can count on me to keep reading to find out. And of course, there's Sheriff Homer Watts, the handsome six-gun-toting lawman who takes special care of his cowboy hat. He can be counted on to ride in and help save the day. Seeing these recurring characters develop is one of the best parts of reading the series.

This cast of characters is one that is determined to confront injustice, and watching how Agents Swanson and Sharp and all the rest bring justice to the Dead Mountain 9 is the icing on the cake of an extremely enjoyable read. I can't wait for the next book in the series! show less

A while back I reviewed the suckfest that is Gideon's Sword by these same authors and said that I hoped said suckfest wouldn't leak over into the Pendergast books. Well guess what? It has.

Spoilers set to kill. Seriously. You've been warned.

So this might be the end of me and Pendergast. He's lost his mystique, gravitas and sense. And with this one the already ludicrous plot went even further into eye-rolling territory. Nazis? Really? That's the best you could come up with? Nazis? And even show more worse, Nazis in Brazil who are still continuing with genetic experiments in order to create a master race? As if The Boys From Brazil wasn't enough of this kind of thing, Preston & Child had to go there, too, and worse, they didn't add anything intelligent or even interesting. OMFG. You owe Ira Levin some royalties, guys.

And another thing...Helen dies??? After all that, she croaks? I guess they couldn't figure out what to do with her as a character so they killed her off. All the better to strip Pendergast of all personality, mental conditioning, toughness and resilience. Better to turn him into a simpering asshole, surely. Oy I was sick of him for most of this book. Go ahead and down the super-secret poison already, save me from your misery.

But as sick of Pendergast as I was, it was nothing compared to Alban. After the first few scenes of his I started skimming them. Emotional cheap-shots and mindless, robotic platitudes don't really do it for me and neither did his bizarre mind-reading or future-seeing ability. It was just too much, too fast. Honestly I was expecting Diogenes since we never did see the body so to speak and in comparison, Diogenes is subtle that's how over-the-top Alban is. I guess they wanted to scare me with all their genetic mutation and eugenics stuff, but they didn't. Animal instinct is about all that's driving Alban. His humanity has been bred out and all that's left is a shell governed by an over-simplified set of instructions. Like those Erector set contraptions your brother built when you were a kid. At least Diogenes had the warming glow of emotional-instability to shine over us.

Then there are the multiple storylines, each one reading like a set up for new directions for future novels. The only one of real interest was Constance's, but even that was a re-tread. We already knew about the kid, her childhood, her age and why she's in the nut house. What else is there? Felder's bit of housebreaking was funny, but DNA from hair without roots is not possible. At least so far as I remember. Did the artist try to snatch Constance bald or something? Oy. And even more outrageously silly is the on-cue volcano eruption. And Pendergast didn't even have to fly around the earth backwards or anything. What a time-saver a tame volcano is. Granted, the novels are wicked over-the-top and always have been, but this strained the bounds of reality hard, even for these guys.

Corrie's cliffhanger resolution comes very late in the story and I almost thought they wouldn't get to her at all, but they did and from that we had a wild tangent where she is reunited with her long-lost father, who of course turns out to be a prince, not the pathetic loser her mom made him out to be. The whole car dealership thing is unnecessary and distracting. How the hell does this further anything having to do with Pendergast? We don't care about Corrie. She's a supporting character that had her uses 6 books ago, but isn't interesting enough to be sustainable no matter how much she is compared to Lisbeth Salander.

Last, but not least, was the whole D'agosta thread which has almost no bearing on the situation at all. Nearly in vain he tries to get Pendergast out of his morass of self-pity, but he eventually does. Then they basically sever all ties for the remainder of the novel. Pendergast has to get a new grunt for his assault on the Nazi headquarters and we're left to watch D'agosta try to figure out how to propose to Hayward. Ugh.

So after that little sappy scene, we go back to the mansion on Riverside where Constance is trying to teach Tristram the half-wit how to play some ancient card game. I'm sorry, Tristram isn't really a half-wit, but he's so soppy and backward that he comes off that way. I guess basically being an organ farm for your better half isn't that great for developing any traits that are interesting. And with Alban most likely lurking in the basement, I'm sure we'll have some kind of brother act going on. Will it be a duplicate of the one between A and D or will it be something else? Will Uncle and Nephew join forces and terrorize A and T? I really don't care that much since the magic of these books seems to be sucked dry and it will take a LOT of convincing to make me read the next one. show less