Jukka Särkijärvi

Harry Paget Flashman is one of the few great protagonists that you love to hate. As many have noted, he is not one of those lovable scoundrels with a heart of gold in the vein of Jack Sparrow. Rather, he is as deplorable a failure as a human being as any that graced the cover of a book, right up there with Humbert Humbert among the affable monsters of 20th-century literature. It is a credit to Fraser's skill that his voice is interesting enough to keep us reading about a man whose utter spineless cowardice is his least objectionable characteristic.

As a whole, he can be taken as a metaphor for the British Empire in general. He's a good-looking bastard who goes to foreign countries, abuses the locals, beds the women whether they want it or not, and comes out smelling of daisies and showered with acclaim.

Flashman was a delight to a history buff such as myself. Fraser seeded the novel with a wealth of small details such as the greasiness of the 1830's British cavalry sabres' hilts, and the repeated asides on this or that error that has slipped into Flashman's first-person narration due to his limited perspective on the events. Flashman as a set of fake documents is in itself an impressive feat (to the degree that some real critics were fooled when it first came out).

This, the first book of the series, tells the tale of General Elphinstone's disastrous retreat from Kabul, the famous last stand at Gandamak, and other associated events from 1839 in Afghanistan, fittingly described elsewhere as the Land That Eats Armies. The reader gets a first-hand account of the horrors of war as well as the dismay of being under a commanding officer incapable of tying their own shoelaces. Indeed, the most quotable part of the book is probably Flashman's characterization of the generals he serves under. He may be a bit hard on Elphinstone, as more recent research suggests, but does, notably, lay the blame for Charge of the Light Brigade on Raglan instead of Cardigan (whose biography is named The Reason Why and whom Flashman still doesn't exactly spare).

Flashman busts historical myths about the Empire, whose crimes may seem obvious to us now but were less so to the British in the late 60's, looking about the smoking ruins of the empire upon which sun had finally set and wondering what the devil happened. It does so with wit and style.

Also, the series carries some of the best-looking cover designs out right now. I shall refrain from saying “beautiful”, but I love the style.

Typically, one uses readymade adventure modules to save time on game prep.

Running Power Behind the Throne very likely requires more prep time than just winging it.

Nobody could wing something as complex as Power Behind the Throne. Worth it.

All those rhyming couplets. So many rhyming couplets.

That's quite a flex. Not many people can brag they've read the entirety of the Marvel Universe, all 540,000 pages of it, or thereabouts. The numbers are staggering and illustrate how easily large numbers exit the sphere of easy comprehension. I figured I was well-read, but even with a generous estimate, I cannot claim to have put away more than maybe 2,000 of the over 27,000 issues that Wolk reads into the story of Marvel.And he discusses it as a single story, from a perspective that is quite likely unique. And while it's possible there's someone else out there who has achieved this same feat, they didn't write a book. Wolk did. He also hastens to note that it is not something you should be trying at home. It is not meant to be consumed in that fashion. You can pick up more or less any issue and though you will have missed things, you will get on board pretty quickly. That's how they're written. You will not know everything, and all those of us who grew up with these people who wear their underpants on top of their tights learned to deal with it.The book's chapters, after the introductory pleasantries are done, alternate between deep overviews of specific characters or groups, and interludes laying down historical context. In the overviews, Wolk explains things like Spider-Man's confusing story from that first spider bite to present day, focusing on key issues and using them as springboards to expound upon overarching themes. The text is lively, with a wry humour. Even banal observations, such as Spider-Man's early rogues' gallery being populated with faulty father figures, are lent weight by Wolk's perspective. And let's face it, there are a lot of banal observations to be had here. While there is such a thing as a subtle superhero comic, it has never been a hallmark of the genre and especially so in the early days. Nevertheless, it's entertaining to read and sometimes it's comforting to be told what you knew already by an authority.More insightful is Wolk's unpacking of the metafictional dimensions and storytelling sleight-of-hand in Jonathan Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers runs, or the Trump-before-Trump of The Dark Reign. The book truly shines where he tracks the callbacks and the connections between issues and runs, from decades apart, noting things like Riri Williams belting out a few bars of a song from a 30-year-old issue of Dazzler. The chapters describing the origins of the Marvel story were genuinely moving to me, such as an interlude about March 1965, when for the first time, stories in different Marvel comic books affected one another in permanent ways. It is a description of the birth of something new, a beginning that from five issues of comics printed on cheap paper led, more or less directly, to someone 50 years down the line being able to make a movie that spends its entire three-hour runtime running laps in honour of itself, and not only does it work, it is the cinema event of the year.And that's what makes this important. We are not used to analytic discussions of storytelling at such sheer scale. Sure, there's been books about superhero comics before, but nothing that I know that has taken the view that it, all of it, is one, single story. Nothing else comes close, though there are several other media properties big enough to be nigh-unapproachable. DC's comics are an obvious one, and several role-playing game properties, especially ones that were around in the heady years of the 1990s, are in the same weight class. I would argue we need more of this, more work by people who can take a look at a reading list spanning a thousand interrelated titles, fearlessly hit the stacks, and come back to tell the tale.Though a work of this magnitude can only be a labour of love, Wolk is not uncritical of his subject. He rightly notes when the treatment of women or minorities has been lacking, both on the page and in the bullpen. There is an entire chapter on Shang-Chi, which notes the many things it did right, without shirking from the fact that there's a big old racist caricature Fu Manchu right there in the middle of things. A voice is also given to Bill Wu, an Asian-American fan – and in later times, the SF author [a:William F. Wu 48897 William F. Wu https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1537705215p2/48897.jpg] – who was a constant presence on Master of Kung Fu's letters page, expressing his affection for the series while constantly criticising its racist caricatures.Reading all of the Marvels is a flex, but clearly, you cannot read that many Spider-Man comics without internalizing that with great power comes great responsibility. Wolk throws the gates wide open, with the message that superhero comics are, and should be, for everyone. While the obvious starting point for the Marvel story is Fantastic Four #1, and another the aforementioned March 1965, Wolk also presents an alternative preceding them, the deep cut of Linda Carter, Student Nurse, whose run had zero to do with superheroes, until much, much later, she did. Here, too, were Marvel's first crossovers, with the characters of these career girl comics appearing in one another's titles – including one Patsy Walker. This is, at least to Wolk, the true beginning. (Also worthy of note, of course, is Captain America #1, because it should not be forgotten that before Avengers, before Fantastic Four, and before X-Men, there was the lone soldier Captain America, and his first appearance was punching Hitler in the face.)As he keeps hammering home, however, nobody can read it all and the book is not “1001 Marvel Comics You Must Read Before You Die”. He suggests strategies, starting points, ways to find out what you like and how to find more of it. The throughline in all his advice is clear: read what you want.It's not as though you're going to run out.

It's always a dangerous business retreading the path of a classic. [b:Roadside Picnic|331256|Roadside Picnic|Arkady Strugatsky|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1173812259s/331256.jpg|1243896] is one of the timeless masterworks of science fiction, and anything carrying its name is going to be compared to it. This is unlikely to be flattering to the imitator.

However, the Strugatskys were also setting builders par excellence, and with a few broad strokes suggested a wide world outside the Canadian town of Harmont. It's this wider world that Vuorela dips into, imagining Zone France and bringing the stalker experience to the present day, giving it the trappings of a modern technothriller while retaining the inexplicable weirdness of the Zones and their artefacts.

Our male lead is Jacob Moncke, a presumably German policeman of a unit specialized in Zone-related crime. He's a terrible person and kinda pathetic (Indeed, he's a stalker! Of the not cool kind.), which helps offset his action hero proficiency with violence. He's also good with witty banter, as are most people in the novel, and many of the interactions in the novel are hilarious reads.

There's a conspiracy, some murders, shuttling back and forth between Germany, France and Switzerland, and yes, we get to enter the Zone. It's a good technothriller, entertaining and fast to read. I'm also a fan of the beginning, which features the most audacious, causality-can-go-fuck-itself use of a Zone artifact pretty much ever.

What irritated me was the language. Clearly, the novel could've used a few more editing passes. There are some instances of telling rather than showing and sentences are encumbered by gratuitous adverbs. This leeches energy from a couple of the action scenes.

What really drives me up the wall is the refusal to pick a language and stick to it. For instance, there are several references to the Saxony Kriminalpolizei. This is terrible. It should be either Sachsen Kriminalpolizei or the Saxony Criminal Police, not a mixture of two languages. Another one was the spelling “Koeln” for what I presume was the city of Cologne, or in German, Köln.

Also, a note about the ending. This is the first Roadside Picnic-related work I have seen that does not feature the patented Stalker ending where nobody understands what just happened and then the story is over. This may be a feature or a bug, depending on the reader.

Merged review:

It's always a dangerous business retreading the path of a classic. [b:Roadside Picnic|331256|Roadside Picnic|Arkady Strugatsky|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1173812259s/331256.jpg|1243896] is one of the timeless masterworks of science fiction, and anything carrying its name is going to be compared to it. This is unlikely to be flattering to the imitator.

However, the Strugatskys were also setting builders par excellence, and with a few broad strokes suggested a wide world outside the Canadian town of Harmont. It's this wider world that Vuorela dips into, imagining Zone France and bringing the stalker experience to the present day, giving it the trappings of a modern technothriller while retaining the inexplicable weirdness of the Zones and their artefacts.

Our male lead is Jacob Moncke, a presumably German policeman of a unit specialized in Zone-related crime. He's a terrible person and kinda pathetic (Indeed, he's a stalker! Of the not cool kind.), which helps offset his action hero proficiency with violence. He's also good with witty banter, as are most people in the novel, and many of the interactions in the novel are hilarious reads.

There's a conspiracy, some murders, shuttling back and forth between Germany, France and Switzerland, and yes, we get to enter the Zone. It's a good technothriller, entertaining and fast to read. I'm also a fan of the beginning, which features the most audacious, causality-can-go-fuck-itself use of a Zone artifact pretty much ever.

What irritated me was the language. Clearly, the novel could've used a few more editing passes. There are some instances of telling rather than showing and sentences are encumbered by gratuitous adverbs. This leeches energy from a couple of the action scenes.

What really drives me up the wall is the refusal to pick a language and stick to it. For instance, there are several references to the Saxony Kriminalpolizei. This is terrible. It should be either Sachsen Kriminalpolizei or the Saxony Criminal Police, not a mixture of two languages. Another one was the spelling “Koeln” for what I presume was the city of Cologne, or in German, Köln.

Also, a note about the ending. This is the first Roadside Picnic-related work I have seen that does not feature the patented Stalker ending where nobody understands what just happened and then the story is over. This may be a feature or a bug, depending on the reader.