Malmont, Paul. The Chinatown death cloud peril. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. 367pp.

Now this is a cool book! A phantasmagorical postmodern pastiche-orama, a 1930s pulp plot involving 1930s pulp authors as the main protagonists!

Walter Gibson (Maxwell Grant/The Shadow) and Lester Dent (Kenneth Robeson/Doc Savage) are the main ones, with significant contributions from L. Ron Hubbard, Chester Himes, John W. Campbell, Orson Welles, H.P. Lovecraft, Cornell Woolrich, E.E. “Doc” Smith, Stan Lee, “Otis Driftwood” (I'm not giving that one away...), Blackstone the Magician, even Joe Kavalier gets a mention and Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster get a cameo! And that's not including the ones I don't recognize!

Crammed full of colourful action sequences, daring escapes, dastardly villains with evil plots, weird science, zombies, magicians and evil, cruel editors, it's actually a bit short on plot sanity and cohesion, but it's definitely long on atmosphere and good old pulpy fun. I can't recommend this novel enough. I really enjoyed it, despite a few first novel failings.
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Novik, Naomi. Thone of jade. New York: Del Rey, 2006. 432pp.

This is the second in Naomi Novik's Temeraire series of novels, the first being His majesty's dragon. The series is an alternate history fantasy set during the Napoleonic wars, the different being that the various warring factions have dragons that they use more or less like flying warships, complete with rigging, crews and naval jargon and naval tactics.

The first got terrific reviews and was one of the serious buzz books in 2006 and I'll admit to being fairly positive myself. Throne of jade was a different story altogether. It got altogether mixed reviews most saying it was pretty boring compared to the first. I'm more or less in agreement with those sentiments though perhaps not as strongly as many.

The basic plot is that the Chinese government was the dragon, Temeraire, back from th e British, who captured him as an egg from a French ship.The Brits, and in particular his British captain, Will Laurence, disagree and want to keep him. A complication is that the government would seem willing to give the dragon up to secure the Chinese cooperation against the French. So, Laurence, Temeraire, a Chinese delegation and some British government officials set off on a boat for China to see what deal can be struck. Around page 100. And arrive around page 300. Two hundred pages on a boat. This is what everyone complains about with the novel, that those 200 pages are filled with, well, filler. And they are. The voyage should have been compressed into 50-75 pages and the wheeling and dealing in China made the true focus of the novel. I agree. The last 100 or so pages were great, very tense, very exciting, full of intrigue and drama. Everything the voyage was not.

So, not a great book, but not so bad either. There were a few good battles and crises on the slow boat to China to keep me somewhat interested but I do definitely hopw that the third book is much more focused and keeps it's eye on the dragon.

Novik, Naomi. His majesty's dragon. New York: Del Rey, 2006. 353pp.

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik is the first book of a new series, one of the real buzz books of the last several months, with great reviews and lots of hype. The setting for the series is the Napoleonic wars, but with a difference. There are dragons. Big ones. And both sides use them as sort of a cross between fighter planes and sailing ships, with an odd array of battle tactics to boot.

This novel is the story of Will Laurence, British ship captain, who captures a dragon egg from a French sailing vessel. The egg hatches before they can get to shore and give it to the authorities and the dragon latches on to Will as his combination mommy and trainer. Kinda weird, but in a good way. Dragons in this universe are highly intelligent and articulate. This novel mostly sets up the rest of the series, with a lot of time spent on the care and training of the dragon, Temeraire, paying particular attention to the close relationship between Temeraire and Will.

There are a few good battle scenes at the end, a little unrealistic in their construction. For example, they often use their dragons (which have crews of a dozen or more "sailors" strapped to their complex riggings) to come up beside and actually attempt to board other dragons. Just try to imagine it and you'll see how unlikely it seems -- couldn't the dragons just fly away when the other one got close?

Anyways, enough quibbling. This is a good, solid first novel. I look forward to the sequels. The one worrying thing is that Novik has apparently signed up for at least 5 more books and I often get worried about quality in long series.