Troyana by S.P. Meek

A short while back, in my review of S.P. Meek’s 1930 offering The Drums of Tapajos, I mentioned that this was a lost-race novel that was fatally done in by both a paucity of descriptive detail and a lack of memorable dramatic incidents. And indeed, of the 23 books that this reader has so far experienced in Armchair Fiction’s ongoing Lost World/Lost Race series, which currently stands at 30 volumes, The Drums of Tapajos might very well have been the weakest of the bunch. But in that same review I also admitted some slight desire to someday check out the book’s sequel, Troyana, in the hopes that things might pick up a little, or that Meek’s skills as a wordsmith might somehow have improved... Read More

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

We all know Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World as a classic dystopian tale of a world bereft of conflict, pain, and hardship — but also lacking individuality, free will, and intellectual thought. You were probably forced to read it in high school (I somehow missed it) and if you were a normal teen it must be have been either very weird or strangely appealing (unlimited free drugs and sex, a carefree life, etc.). Granted, it's a brilliant critique of the early socialist utopias penned by H.G. Wells, after which Europe was engulfed in World War I and the Russian Revolution. So it was with much cynicism that Huxley must have written his story in 1932 to debunk the naïve fantasies socialists and libertarians had that humanity would solve all economic and social ills and create a perfect society.
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Dwellers in the Mirage by Abraham Merritt

After taking a brief respite — in the hardboiled yet outre crime thriller Seven Footprints to Satan — from the tales of adventurous fantasy at which he so excelled, Abraham Merritt returned in fine form with Dwellers in the Mirage (1932). In this terrific novel, Merritt revisits many of the themes and uses many of the ingredients that made his first novel, The Moon Pool, such an impressive success. Like that early work, Dwellers features a lost civilization (of the type grandfathered by the great H. Rider Haggard), battling priestesses, civil wars, and otherdimensional creatures (in the earlier book, a light creature; i... Read More