BRAK VS. THE SORCERESS by John Jakes

The ghastly red eyes, huge as midsummer moons, had opened again. They watched, watched from the black where the stench drifted. Out of the pit blew more than a smell. Out of the pit came some nameless, ancient evil palpable as a cloud.

Brak's face twisted as the gap between hands closed. Sharp rocks poked his belly, his thighs, little shafts of pain. His shoulders ached. Groping upwards for his hand, the girl lost her balance.

She cried out. She started to fall.

Brak is back! The blond barbarian continues his quest for far Khurdisan (typo'd as Khurdistan on the back cover) and finds himself drawn into more dark doings when he passes through a backwater kingdom that's under siege from a strange new horror. The local alchemist has disappeared, rumored murdered, and his daughter has been acting strangely since. The locals are gossiping that's she's in tune with evil forces, the very same that Brak has tangled with before - the outsider Yob-Haggoth, and where that squat devil-god appears Brak knows that his earthly minion the wizard Septegundus can't be far behind. The local king is weak and fading fast, his armies deserting, the people terrified. Can Brak's savage strength and cunning prevail?

Of course! But thanks to Jakes, we'll be on the edge of our seats the whole way through. Brak will tangle with monstrosities like the subterranean Manworm and Scarletjaw the Direwolf, as well as human treachery and greed as the Sorceress bribes followers with that ancient dream of lead into gold. Jakes has a way with monsters and black magic rites, making us feel the burning ichor, smell the rot, cringe at the obscene rituals ... but it isn't all blood and guts and hopelessness, as Brak meets another of those curious Nestorians, who worship their nameless god with a small stone cross. Ambrose the Pillarite has been asleep atop his rock spire, dreaming across the astral plane, when Brak stumbles into this cursed land. Jakes is working alongside August Derleth's recontextualisation of Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, wherein Christian or "Nestorian" practitioners can fight back against the encroaching darkness and chaos. Brak holds the Nestorians at arm's length throughout his adventures, and as often as not relies on his own godless barbarian skill. The climax features his quick thinking, his brute strength, and some Nestorian power in an assist. I'm happy to say that Brak makes for a dynamic hero and is easily a top tier Conan clone. His battle with the Manworm matches Robert E. Howard's own sublime action, albeit with a more day-glo, in-your-face genre savvy. There's more monsters I haven't spoiled, because Jakes' imagination delivers some pleasantly nasty surprises of a kind with his catfish creatures from Mark of the Demons.

Brak vs. the Sorceress must have been another crowd pleaser, because once again there's plenty of editions out.

The Tower Books edition is interesting in that it portrays the dread Manworm with some accurate details from the text, but has shrunk the poor creature down so small he's hardly a menace at all, and looks more like some kind of devilish frog! The real Manworm is a titan of terror, and the Star Books cover next to the Tower version at least gets the size and ferocity of the beast across. The Pocket Books edition that tops this entry is another fanciful cover, with a giant horned guy who isn't in the story at all. Jakes has a prefatory note where he remarks on the cover art for his Brak stories, but it doesn't cover this 1977 version. Meanwhile, the Paperback Library original from 1968 features a gorgeous Frazetta piece titled "Apparition." Here it is in full:

Brak's battle against the Sorceress and Septegundus earns him a solid 3/4 rating. Once again, get yourself Brak'd!

Pocket Books, 1977 (original pub. 1968)

THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE CALENDAR: November and December 1974

Kusche's 1975 calendar also features as a courtesy November and December 1974, showcasing the mighty USS Proteus and five Grumman TBF Avengers like those lost in Flight 19. All events are identical to those listed in November and December 1975. The complete calendar can be viewed and downloaded at archive dot org.

Lawrence David Kusche, 1974

MAN-EATER by Ted Willis

Got shiny diamonds

Like the eyes of a cat in the black and blue

Something is coming for you ...

Look out!

A washed up circus trainer dumps two tigers on a dark country road and so begins THE SHOCK EXPERIENCE OF THE YEAR ... or maybe not quite, for author Ted Willis is very restrained with his mayhem, and aims for more emotional blows than bloody guts and grue. Though not as feverish as Andrew Sinclair's action in The Cat, Willis delivers a similar setup: a small English town (in this case Whitford) that will soon learn that killer cats are the least of its problems, as their predations on the populace uncover an unholy tangle of sex, lies, and rape that runs straight through the halls of power. It's almost too much for an honest copper like Gosford, but thank God that strange fellow Birk is skulking around, having rented a cottage on the hill ... he seems to have some experience in hunting beasts, whether human or feline. Gosford, Birk, and the rest are about to find out that the tigers are just two of the predators on the prowl in Whitford.

The author

Author Ted Willis (1914-1992) was no slouch, being a prolific playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, a devoted communist, Chairman of the Writer's Guild of Great Britain 1958-1964, and a recipient of a life peerage in 1963! His Man-Eater is artfully drawn out, introducing us to the town of Whitford through the man-eaters' first victim Tom Pickford, stepping out with a local girl on a forest road, and then through Chief Inspector Gosford's stumbling investigation of Pickford's disappearance, which proves frustrating as nobody wants to talk lest they expose Pickford's double life and their own shady dealings. Our tiger mates Ranee and Mohan seem almost perplexed by this bizarre community that's become their hunting grounds, and Willis keeps sympathy for them strong throughout. Meanwhile his focus on his human characters verges on the parapolitical, as we get a feel for the class lines and power networks that keep little Whitford plugged into the national body politic - what a day for some bloody tigers to ruin your child pornography ring!

As philanderers, innocent bystanders, and biker hooligans are rent and bloodied on the moors and in the woods, as the suicides and self incriminations ring out, and as the fierce, lost, doomed tigers find a net tightening inexorably around them, it's enough to drive you to drink. Says gunman Birk, "I'm a bit of an anachronism too, you see, part of the post-imperial hangover. Like those tigers - a member of a doomed species. I'm not really equipped for life in the last half of the Twentieth Century. And frankly, the more I see of it, the less I feel inclined to care."

Some other editions

With Ranee and Mohan burning brightly in the night, Man-Eater hunts down a 3/4 rating.

They're out there ...

Bantam Books, 1977 (original pub. 1976)

FIREBALL by Vic Mayhew and Doug Long.

"The jeans and heavy white sweater she wore warned Young that she was in a practical, no-nonsense mood."

It took two authors to write that tripe. As far as disaster novels go Fireball is a stale dud, a truly forgettable entry in the big space rock boom of the late '70s. Even the title fails to excite, lacking the cold technothriller edge of something like Meteorite Track 291 or the poetry of The Hermes Fall or Lucifer's Hammer. It really feels like we got the leftovers here, with Mayhew and Long gifting us paper thin characters and dragging us through some stilted Cold War skulduggery between the Americans and the Soviets, neither of whom want to admit they've developed space nukes which could save the day at the cost of face. Hero NASA administrator Matt Young doesn't trust the Russkies, of course, and wouldn't you know it they've gone and filmed his colleague Bob Bigelow's runaway daughter turning tricks in an NYC hotel! The Russians also give one of their own the old poison umbrella, which feels like something Mayhew and Long inserted as a hail Mary pass at gritty spy craft.

This ho-hum thriller filler takes up too much of the novel, as does Bigelow's family drama - his young son discovered the fireball in his backyard observatory, but Bigelow's too much of a bad dad to give the kid his due. Mayhew and Long seem incapable of writing genuine dialogue between their characters, with Matt Young and his reporter girlfriend Jenny exchanging underbaked bon mots and everyone else shouting, barking, growling the standard disaster fluff at each other. The scenes checking in on the asteroid's progress through deep space are dull as well, with none of the flair or menace other writers brought to their asteroid novels. John Baxter's single line in The Hermes Fall: "And its teeth are bared in a terrible hatred," is more effective than anything Mayhew and Long can produce. Their invocation of celebrity psychic fraud Jeane Dixon is their best attempt at profundity, and their reference to the Tunguska event is revealingly underwhelming, with a claim of "several square miles" of forest being flattened - the real number is over 800 square miles of destruction around the blast site, and the authors don't even bring up the shattered windows and terrifying shockwaves felt further hundreds of miles away! If they don't care, why should we?

Eventually the joint Apollo-Soyuz launch nukes the asteroid, and we get a perfunctory sequence of Manhattan's obliteration by a remnant hunk of rock, with Mayhew and Long dutifully snuffing a small crew of background characters they've unconvincingly built up one by one to no special effect.

Hardcover

Mayhew and Long both worked for Reader's Digest, which helps explain why there isn't an ounce of artistry between them in this novel. Fireball earns a pathetic 1/4 rating.

Signet Books, 1979 (original pub. 1977)

COVER UPDATES: WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS

Some old guff to ring in the new year, with this Corgi Books reprint of T. Lobsang Rampa's occult dictionary. The back is just a list of all the Rampa titles from Corgi, which must have been selling like hotcakes given the constant reissues.

Courtesy Corgi Books, 1975 (original pub. 1970).