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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2914 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 23, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I read the 4th book in Blaine Lee Pardoe's Land&Sea series. Like the others, it was ok. This one was a collection of short stories not unlike the compilations that would be released for Battletech from the Battlecorps website, back when for whatever licensing reasons full length novels weren't allowed to be published in the "classic" setting.

I constantly question why I'm still reading this series. I think it just scratches that Battletech fiction itch I have after reading probably 100+ novels, and quitting cold turkey. IMHO the setting isn't nearly as good as Battletech, and the limitations of Blaine's writing style are made all the more evident in the Land&Sea setting versus Battletech. All the same, I have needs god damnit, and if I have to settle for knockoff Battletech, I will.

I acquired this beauty from 1970, A Princess of Mars with the Frank Frazetta artwork on the dust jacket. It's a pretty brisk read at 150-ish pages. I'm about halfway through, and the first half was probably the most difficult. Lots of internal monologuing and fairly anodyne descriptions of the flora and fauna of Mars since John Carter doesn't understand the Martian language at first. Coming off Conan and Howard's expert descriptive language, Burrough's struggles IMHO. But, that seems to be behind me now as the main character is conversing and exercising more agency in the story, and things are looking up.

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Hell yeah, Frazetta covers. Men would kill to have her quads.

Weirdly enough, the Barsoom covers are probably the only Frazetta cover (or any other) art where he drew the characters with more clothing than the source material described.

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