Fairy Tale Spotlight: Land of the Giants (Book Review)

"Land of the Giants" is a novel written by Murray Leinster. It was published in 1968 by Pyramid Books. I'll explain why I mentioned the publishers in a minute. The story was the telling of the pilot episode for the TV show of the same name. (But not really.)

First of all, I want to say that the story of this book is good. I did enjoy it's telling. It is a complete telling of the initial journey from earth to the Land of the Giants from the TV show. However, the writer here absolutely does his own thing. He tells his own story the way he wants to tell it, so it doesn't match up hardly at all with the pilot episode. So if you read this, don't expect any connection with the show at all. Just don't.

The story is about the Spindrift, a ship that was going from USA to London. It hits some sort of space warp that sends them light years away to a world where everything is giant. The crew and passengers must then find ways to survive in a world that is actually surprisingly hostile towards them. The giants don't seem to be good people, but the writer chocks this up to them being a little too much like man. This is a cynical viewpoint and not necessarily the way it was presented in the show.

In the TV show, the ship gets stranded and in need of repairs, but in this book, it is fully capable of flying and pretty much stays in the air for most of the story. This was an unusual departure from the show. They were well within their ability to just leave if things got too hot. It also rather prevented them from having very many interactions with the giants, which was a disappointment honestly.

Steve, the captain of the ship, is still presented as a brilliant hero type, but he spends most of his time raging against both his situation and the people he has to survive with. He sees them as stupid and silly, where he seems to have the only level head among them. Although this may be true of the TV show, it doesn't always feel like that. In truth, he often seemed to me to be a tortured man who cared about everyone. Either way, he was a supremely heroic individual, and the author did get that right.

The other characters were... fine. I mean... there could have been better representation. The cowardly and lazy Fitzhugh was there and being himself, but there just wasn't as much of him as I would like. Also he was missing his case full of money that was rather integral to his introduction to the series. His entire backstory was apparently changed for the book. The TV version of him was better.

I should also say that they rescued a girl that wasn't even a character in the show. That was weird. I kept thinking she was going to get kidnapped or leave or something... but she was just there. This is another reason why I think the author was just ignoring the show entirely.

That's all I really wanna say about the story. I have to address some really terrible things about this book that boggle my mind. Let's get cracking!

For one, this book is terribly edited. There are sometimes multiple spaces between words. The author constantly forgets the name of the dog Chipper and occasionally refers to him as Skipper. Chapter Seven is just... missing! That's right! There's no Chapter Seven. Nothing is skipped, but the chapter numbering was just messed up. Also this is the most redundant author I have ever read.

Murray Leinster does not seem to know when to stop saying something. He states and restates things constantly to the point of absurdity. I've heard people actually talk like this in conversation. Even I have done it. It usually happens when you aren't sure if the person you are talking to actually understands what you mean, so you keep rehashing and restating things over and over until they firmly acknowledge you. Perhaps this is reasonable in conversation, but in a narrative it is extremely annoying.

It got so bad that I was able to begin predicting it. When something new was mentioned, I would wait for someone to talk about it, then another person mention it, and then it would just get restated in narration again, sometimes twice in the same paragraph! If these redundancies were filtered out, the book would have been so much shorter. I don't know if it was just a way for the author to pad out the story or if he is just bad at writing.

Pyramid Books really should have gotten their act together when they published this. I blame them more than the author because this book was actually a second printing. I cannot even imagine the disaster that the first printing must have been. Both came out in the same year too. I think perhaps that something just went wrong and they just could not fix whatever the problems were. What we have left with is a very strange interpretation of the show filled with errors and bad writing.

Now, I did say I liked the story. That is true. But do I like the book? No. I really don't. It is more of a novelty as a badly published adaptation than something that I actually enjoyed. I don't recommend it at all. I have just never seen a book in such bad written condition as this. It was honestly kind of fun writing a blog just to bash it. At the end of the day, that was the whole point of getting to the end of it, I guess. Some books just have it coming.

This blog was written on October 25, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Adventures in Oz [Book Review]

[This blog contains spoilers for a book nobody reads anymore.]

"Adventures in Oz" is the fifty-fourth book in the Oz series created by L. Frank Baum. It was written and illustrated by Eric Shanower, and it was published in 2006, although its actual creation happened between 1986 and 1992. Oh, right... and it's a graphic novel. It's a comic book. No, I'm not joking! Number 54 is an actual comic book. To my knowledge, this is the only time this happens in canon history.

"Adventures in Oz" is actually a collection of five stories. The artwork is all crisp and beautiful, and everything is extremely well-paced. Shanower is an absolute Oz genius, and I am not super surprised (only a little surprised) that his work ended up in the canon. He knows what he is doing. I'll tell you a little about each story in the book.

"The Enchanted Apples of Oz"

This story goes heavily into the reasons why Oz is enchanted the way it is. It also strangely goes back to the Wicked Witch of the South who has been asleep for ages. This story somewhat ignores the events of "The Wicked Witch of Oz" even though Shanower was the Illustrator for that book. Weird.

There are these apples that must be tended to or else the magic of Oz will fade away, and the witch is trying to take all of Oz's enchantments for herself. Hilariously, she was woken up by a man born of a race of ugly people. He fell in love with her at first sight, but she did not care at all about him. I thought that was a funny little plot-point. Felt kinda bad for him honestly.

"The Secret Island of Oz"

A good-old adventures with Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion out searching for a rare fish for the Gardener for the Emerald Palace. A hilarious reason to go out on an adventure, but it ultimately leads to some pretty scary situations. They end up in an island where a whole civilization exists.

There is also an interesting relationship between a princess and her living doll. It's got like this odd story about how they used to be friends, but as she is grown up now, she sort of doesn't care about him anymore, which leaves him without a friend or a purpose. Good stuff, honestly.

"The Ice King of Oz"

Scary from the get-go. A strange and powerful man called the Ice King pays tribute to Ozma but demands marriage with Princess Dorothy as a means to broker peace between the two nations. When Dorothy rejects this, he kidnaps Ozma and forces marriage on her. What makes things even scarier is that the Ice King is really awfully powerful and can enervate magic coming from Oz. He also has a legion of ice imps that do his bidding without question. It's almost as damn oppressive as the Gnome King's palace from the movie "Return to Oz."

I really enjoyed the intensity of this one. It put a lot of characters in extreme danger and often felt hopeless. It's ending was surprisingly touching and sweet. I really liked it. Shanower is at his best when he treats Oz seriously like this.

"The Forgotten Forest of Oz"

One of the wood-nymphs of the Forest of Burzee is banished for kissing a mortal. She is then made into a mortal but then later marries the king of the trolls (which looks surprisingly like Ganondwarf from the Zelda series.) Feeling like she has to get revenge on her former wood-nymphs, she proposes a war against them with the king, something that they wanted to do anyways.

Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and the Sawhorse accidently get caught up in this one. It is the only one in the book that deals with an all out war. War is not a theme that happens much in Oz, but it does occasionally crop up. I liked this one for how epic is got. Things get really nasty as they progressed.

"The Blue Witch of Oz"

A bit of a game changer here. Shanower messes with the known canon pretty heavily here, but not in a bad way. The Good Witch of the East! The story tells her story and ultimately invites her into permanent canon. I don't have a problem with this. In fact, I think it would have been nice if more Oz authors had had more of a backbone.

This one was good. It's a story of love, lost, and missing children. It also has some very sad loose ends. Not bad, mind you. It just deals with some unknowns that lead to sadness on behalf of some of the characters. I'll just leave it at that. It was a very dramatic one with some very interesting uses of magic. Probably the most science fiction of the bunch, and not in a bad way.

"Adventures in Oz" gets a huge recommendation from me. Even as a graphic novel, the stories are so well done, and everything fits right into the way Oz works. These are stories I won't soon forget.

This blog was written on October 20, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds [Album Review]

"Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds" is a double musical album that was released in 1978. It is a two hour long musical that covers the entire original story of H.G. Well's classic story of the same name.

A musical for "The War of the Worlds?" Is it even possible? Yes! Jeff Wayne totally did it, and I loved every moment of it!

Most of the music is instrumental, but some of them, mostly towards the second half, have full lyrics. The way it works is that there is a narrator who is reading passages from the book, and then there is music to accompany the mood. This is splendidly accomplished, by the way.

The main theme basically signifies the incredible occurrence that Earth is facing as the Martians are invading. There are also pieces that deal with the great battles with the tripods, the separation from his wife, and even a very creepy piece about the red weeds.

There was also a very interesting song about the curate and how he is losing his mind about the whole thing. It's got some really interesting lyrics about the spirit of man and fighting demons. Good stuff.

There are differences between the story of the musical when compared to the book, but a lot of these differences are actually improvements. They combine the main character with his brother, which honestly should have happened in the book. I always thought it was weird how the book jumped away to a completely different person right in the middle of the story. The destruction of the Thunder Child was actually used as a way to save the main character's wife. That is a great edit! In many ways, I enjoyed this version of the story more than the book itself.

Also a movie for this musical was planned (and would have been awesome), though it never actually happened. There is, however, a live stage show that I have not yet seen. I will see it though! I have it on my short list of movies I want to see. The DVD is out of print so I am having to look for it in other places. I may review that separately when I see it. It sounds pretty awesome.

Not only do I recommend "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds," but I honestly think you should look it up and spend the two hours listening to it. The music in it honestly kicks ass. A lot of the instruments were electric combined with synthetics. I think there might have been an electric banjo somewhere in there too, but I am not sure about that. There was some weird noises in some of those songs.

Either way, look it up! It is a fantastic and exciting way to experience "The War of the Worlds!"

This blog was written on October 20, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Kobolds Are Cute

Not long ago, Kobolds were suddenly changed to be something far more standardized. Although before, they were just another generic fairy monster that could be just about anything. The current standard makes them out to be a bunch of colorful lizards. Little mini-dragons if you will.

From what I can tell, they like to go on adventures and often get into trouble, mainly from just getting in over their heads. They don't always die, but a lot of them do, and that seems to be the fate of many a kobold. The funny thing about it is that no matter how many you kill, there will probably be more to replace them.

The kobolds we have today look like they were born in one of those gumball machines that spit out the little plastic bubbles. Remember those? I can imagine people wanting to collect little kobolds from one of those machines.

It's a bit remarkable to me that something so prone to being killed has a sort of collector's value to them. I even imagine them getting captured by some wealthy eccentric that keeps them in a room where he can accessorize them and show them off to people for bragging rights. As cute as they are, I can see that happening.

Kobolds tend to think of themselves very seriously, but they will always be low-level individuals. They can't deal with heroes or big monsters. But they might still try... and fail. I think one of the reason people like them so much is because they really aren't all that intimidating, even when they are trying to be.

That's really all I wanted to talk about this time. I just moved into a house and got a new laptop. I'm also in the middle of a bunch of books, so I have nothing to review. Hope you enjoyed reading this either way.

This blog was written on October 17, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Congratulations! You're an Angel!

Congratulations! You're an angel! You lived such an amazing life that God, in all of His wisdom, decided that He would make you an angel in the afterlife. I am sure you are very happy to hear this. He does this sometimes, especially to children who die very young or while fighting major diseases. Yes, many of them became angels for this very reason.

Now that you are about to begin your new journey, there are a few things you will need to understand. Please pay attention. It's all very important.

#1: You no longer have a soul. Yes, sorry. Had to do away with that. Having a soul is something only true humans get, and believe it or not... you aren't human anymore! God, in all of His wisdom, has completely transmogrified you into an angel, which is a different species. Your eternal birthright has been revoked, but don't worry because... you're an angel. You have vastly greater powers than any human was ever capable of. You're very bloodline was stripped from the stars themselves. It's great!

#2: You entirely answer to God and no one else... including yourself. Although you could revoke this privilege at the outset, we already suspect that you have given your heart to the service of God, and so He, in all of His Wisdom, have stripped you of all free will. You must now do anything and everything He wants like a good robot puppy. Isn't it great? Imagine using all of that Holy Power in doing nothing but exactly what you're told to do with it. Wow!

#3: Guard duty. There's a lot of that. Also sending messages. God, in all of His wisdom, needs messengers to talk to the actual humans who still have souls. You may also be tasked with killing some of them if you are of proper rank. But at the outset, you may just be tasked with standing in one place for the foreseeable future. And the best part of this is that you won't even be bored doing it because angels don't care about that sort of thing. You're still useful! You're just not doing much.

#4: Lastly, God, in all of His wisdom, has tasked you with helping the humans that still have their souls. In the New Heaven and New Earth, they will need assistance in completing their projects. Just do whatever they tell you to do. No, you can't have your own projects. That's not what angels are for. If they tell you to dance, you dance. Dance, monkey!

In conclusion, I really do think it is very good that some of you humans become angels when you die. Think about how much better you are for it. You get to lose all of your free will and do tasks for the poor non-angel people for eternity. It's great. It really it. Now, get to work!

[Also before you ask, you are not allowed to kill yourself. Being an an angel is forever.]

This blog was written on October 13, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Is It Going to Be Okay?

Is it going to be okay? That is the question. Or is it? Maybe the real question should be: Should we tell them that it going to be okay? Is there a reason we should tell them it's going to be okay? Do you think it will help? Is telling people it's going to be okay helpful?

What if it isn't okay? What if you are cornered by some mischievous creatures that may or may not mean you harm? Actually they probably do mean you harm. Is it going to be okay? How should I answer this?

A fire breaks out, blocking off your exit to the outside. There's only one way to go: a blackened portal with laughing noises coming out of it. Should I tell them that it's going to be okay? Is that what they want to hear or would they prefer that I not tell them that. FYI, I don't have to tell them that it will be okay. It might be slightly less than honest if I do, but it might make them feel better. What do you think?

The wolves are talking. Can you hear them? They don't have a very good opinion of the people they are hunting. I don't know what's worse: the fact that they are being hunted or the fact that the wolves are talking. What should I say about the fates of these potential victims? Should I say that they are going to be okay? I mean... there's always the possibility that they will make it away from the talking wolves, but what if that's not how it exactly goes? Is it okay to say that it will be okay? Which is doing more harm?

Did Bambi's mother really die? Is she okay? Because I don't think she is okay! But what if someone asks me about it? What if Bambi asks me? Should I tell Bambi that she's okay? Am I a good person for doing so? That gunshot could have been for anybody! And besides, his dad didn't say nothing about it. It's all been left up in the air!

People are disappearing left and right. The hotdogs they've been selling at that new store just don't taste right. Is everything going to be okay? They got people who check all that meat before people eat it... RIGHT?! It's probably not people. But what if hotdogs were people? What if that isn't something anyone wants to hear about. Should I tell them that everything is okay?

Little Red Riding-Hood ended up with the wolf. Is she going to be okay? There was, after all, a hunter in the story. Right? So she's going to be okay. Right? Is it okay to say she is going to be okay? Are we helping anyone by saying so? Is it more grim to be Grimm or less grim for things to not quite be okay?

In conclusion, you must not ask yourself if it is going to be okay, but you must ask yourself if it is good to say so when it probably isn't true. And let's be honest... It isn't. It's not going to be okay... unless you don't want to hear that... in which case... I honestly choose to say nothing at all.

The end. (Probably the bad one where things are not okay.)

This blog was written on October 9, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: Scanners [Book Review]

"Scanners" is a novel written by Leon Whiteson. It was published in 1980. This book was intended to come out before the release of the film of the same name. I actually sought this book out after seeing that movie for the first time. This blog is more about the book than it is the movie.

The whole idea of Scanners is that there are a group of certain human beings that have strong psychic powers. They can hear people's thoughts, and they can also "scan" people to figure out what they know. The scanning technique is invasive and causes a lot of friction. It is much like having a real spectral hand shoved into your head. It doesn't feel nice, and, in the worst of cases, it can actually cause your body to heat up and possibly explode.

The way the movie delivered these concepts were so fascinating to me that it made me want to read a book about it. I wanted more vivid descriptions of what it felt like to be a scanner and what it was like to be the one being scanned. Thankfully, the book delivered.

Before you ask, I'm not really going to spoil anything in the book. You can just as easily see the movie and get what the book is about. I like the movie too much to spoil it. You should see the film. It's surprisingly realistic in its presentation for a movie made in 1981. It is hard science fiction.

The book is a little hard to find for a reasonable amount of money. I threw out a good chunk of cash just to get it. It paid off enough. I've mentioned this before, but a lot of these adaptations tend to be based off the original movie script. I like to read them because it shows me what the original idea for these films might have been and also to help me get a better lock on the events portrayed in the film.

In the case of this novel, there are notable differences from the film. Some are improvements and in some cases the movie did it better. But really the thing that makes the book worth a damn is its vivid descriptions of the scanning technique. That was the reason I wanted to read it to begin with.

The most notable thing I learned had to do with the strange warbling noise you heard in the movie whenever scanning was happening. I thought that this was just a soundtrack thing that was put in to help the audience know that scanning was taking place. However, the book makes it clear that the scanners can hear that noise. It is referred to as a "scan tone." That is extremely cool to learn.

I recommend both the movie and the novel for "Scanners," but you really should see the movie if you had to choose between the two. The movie was what made me even care about the book. The book is secondary, but it is really quite good and I am glad I got the opportunity to read it.

This blog was written on October 7, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Surreal and Lazy World of Final Fantasy XV

I reviewed Final Fantasy XV a number of years ago. I praised it for having one of the best written stories of the ones I have played. I am not here to do that at the moment. I want to talk a bit about the first chunk of the game, otherwise known as "the road-trip."

The second half of the game is very linear. You are pushed through a corridor of plot and action until the very final boss of the game. That first bit though has you driving around a vast open world doing small quests for various people across the land. Very little of it actually has anything to do with the main story.

In fact, there is one quest that is basically a commercial for Cup Noodles. All you do there is go find some monster meat to add to the brand name noodle snack. It's not important, but it still counts as a quest. There are a lot of silly, almost pointless quests like this.

Normally I don't like stuff like this in games. They did it really badly in the game "Neir." That game was absolutely to the brim with pointless quests, and I really did not enjoy any of them. What's the difference? FFXV has a car!

Not only does this game have a car, you have a chauffeur who will drive it for you. Yes, you can drive it if you want, but there's not much point to it. Until you get an off-road vehicle much later, you have to perfectly obey the driving laws without exception. Just let someone else do it.

So much of the game at this point is just the game playing itself as you go from one place to another. When you get there, you have stuff to do. However, after you finished your business, you get right back into the car and keep going. The game does have a fast-travel system, but I only use it if something causes me an irritation, such as being forced to go back to a place right after leaving it. This doesn't happen too much though.

The car comes with a music player that supports just about the entire Final Fantasy soundtrack for all the games up to that point. It also has the soundtrack to non-Final Fantasy games as well. It's pretty relaxing to just listen to this music while I do something on my nearby laptop.

Occasionally the characters will have an in-car conversation. It's usually Prompto wanting to stop to take a photograph of one of the local landmarks. I always stop to do these.

The whole experience is surreal and lazy. It just makes you feel like you are on vacation and out to enjoy yourself. Comically, you are also seriously racking up experience points while doing this as well. By the time you actually do decide to leave the open world and go into the second linier half of the game, you'll be hilariously overpowered.

Just to be clear, you don't have to play the game this way. You can rush around and get right to the story. You should pretty much have the levels you need for everything. It'll just be a slightly harder game is all. But the real reason I play it like this is because I just find it relaxing. I like seeing the sights and enjoying the drive. When I run out of things to do, I'll make one last final drive to the boat that will take me away, and then I'll work on completing the story.

And the story is damn worth it, by the way. Best story in the whole series in my opinion! And by the time I got to the end the first time, all that time on the road-trip paid off. I had become so close to the other characters by that point that it was a very hard thing to finally say goodbye. If anything, it made the whole experience feel more real.

That's all I wanted to talk about today. Hope you enjoyed the little side-step.

This blog was written on September 30, 2023.

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Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Giant Garden of Oz [Book Review]

[Spoilers included for a book nobody reads anymore.]

"The Giant Garden of Oz" is the fifty-third book in the Oz series created by L. Frank Baum. It was written by Eric Shanower and published in 1993. Yes, I know the year drops back below 2006. That is how the Oz canon works sometimes. Some books were canonized out of order to their publication dates.

So this is another book that was written by an illustrator. Eric Shanower is probably best known for being a mainstream comic book artist. He also did the official graphic novels for the original Oz stories by L. Frank Baum. He is an amazing guy and a talented artist, but how is he at writing?

"The Giant Garden of Oz" perfectly breaks the formula of what makes an Oz book what it is. Although it starts off fairly normal, very quickly does this story begin to feel... different. Different how? Well, it starts off being about Uncle Henry and Aunt Em wanting to finally start their own farm in Oz, something that has been put off for many, many, many decades.

This opening bit of the story has one of the most touching scenes in it that I have ever read in an Oz book. It's all about how Uncle Henry just misses being a farmer and wants to get back into the life. This whole scene is so warm and shows much of his relationship with both his wife and with his niece, Dorothy. I liked it, but I figured it was just the author being a little sentimental. Little did I know that this book was going to just about break me emotionally down the line.

Seriously, what the actual hell is this book?! I don't even know where to begin. Basically, something horrible goes wrong with the farm. All the vegetables grow to a giant size overnight. This may seem fun and whimsical, and in any other Oz book it would have been. In reality, having your house knocked up into the sky by a bunch of giant vegetables that also just destroyed your barn in the process is a very real and terrible problem. And on top of this, Uncle Henry is now feeling like he's just a crap farmer and that it may never work out for him.

Dorothy is then dispatched to go to the Emerald City to get help from Ozma and the Wizard. She goes out with Billina the Yellow Chicken and Toto the Dog. She also meets a very nice cow named Imogene and then the Wizard shortly after. Once the Wizard is found... literally nothing good happens after that. The book becomes a constant stream is terrible, awful things that keep compounding on one another until it leaves the reader exhausted and frankly sad.

Eric knew what he was doing though. Don't get me wrong. I actually do like this book. I think perhaps that the author had seen and was also a fan of the surprisingly dark movie "Return to Oz." That movie dealt with some rough topics. There was a constant feeling of dread that lasted throughout that film, and I was feeling it again as I read this book.

Without going too much into spoilers, Dorothy has to undergo so many nightmarish situations caused by the giant garden that it is a wonder she doesn't have PTSD afterwards. During this story, she is frequently cut, smashed, suffers from crippling hunger and thirst, forced underground into the dirt, touched and grabbed by creepy giant moles, and she also is forced out of her clothing so that she has to do a portion of the story naked. She also bled quite a bit when she was hurt, and the author did not mince words about what this was like. By the end of the story, she was a filthy, naked, and terrified girl.

Oh, and by the way, this book is canon. It actually happened.

Surprisingly, much of the horror comes from the fact that nobody can die in Oz. But, as the Wizard explains, if the heart stops beating, blood cannot get to the brain. If the brain doesn't get blood, then it cannot properly function. The person may be alive, but they will remain in a state of unconsciousness until they can somehow be saved, if that is even possible, mind you. In many ways, it is still possible to die in Oz... even if you're technically still alive.

The main structure of this story was a lot like an Irwin Allen movie, such as "Towering Inferno" or "The Poseidon Adventure." It is genuinely as scary as one of those movies as well. This book is basically a survival horror from beginning to end. Although the book is intended for children, be forewarned that in every other aspect, this really is an adult book. Read it to your children at your own risk. If it was made into a movie, it could easily get the PG-13 rating if not R out right. (The R is especially a possibility when you consider how violated Dorothy feels when she loses her clothing and how she has to confront not only her friends while naked but also her aunt and uncle, who are basically her parents.)

"The Giant Garden of Oz" is an extremely well-written Oz book. It's good. It's really good. I do recommend it. Although I should say that if you have phobias of being trapped in the dark and similar things, I would run away from this one. It's so intensely written that it may actually make you feel like it's happening.

By the way, if you are thinking about giving this one a read, it's super available. The book is still in print and available for a very good price for both physical and Kindle versions. If you are looking for a deadly serious Oz book that bridges the horror survival genre with the whimsy of Oz, then you need to read this book. It is well worth your time.

This blog was written on September 27, 2023.

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