The Sign of Zorro, the last of the original Zorro books I own (and the last I'll read both because they're not great and because the later stories areThe Sign of Zorro, the last of the original Zorro books I own (and the last I'll read both because they're not great and because the later stories are not easy to get my hands on), was...better than the previous three in a lot of ways, but still...not good.
I've observed all along while reading McCulley's original books that a lot of the problems with plot and pacing comes from the fact that basically inventing a new genre is hard: unlike authors writing superhero stories in the twenty-first century - where lots of things have been tried and author's can draw on the trial and error of previously published stories - McCulley was largely making it up as he went along, experimenting all the way. It's part of the reason why reveals the identity of his masked hero at the end of the first book, waffles on how to handle that throughout books two and three, and book four starts off with the author sort of retconning the reveal. In The Sign of Zorro, it's quickly established that the public believes Diego to have lied about being Zorro to improve his reputation. How the public believe this, given the events of Further Adventures and Rides Again both focus on the fact Diego is Zorro and being unequivocally public about it, is just...handwaved away. (It's a plot point in Sign that Diego actively lies to people about Zorro - such as having Diego be "abducted" while Zorro is known to be out and about - but that doesn't start until the plot of the book does and doesn't explain why people had this opinion prior to such deliberate misdirection.)
Regardless, despite how disappointingly it's handled - see aforementioned handwaving - I was tentatively excited to see something like that, that would allow for easier continued storytelling. This tentative excitement was added to when it was revealed that, in the interim since the last book, Lolita has died (referencing the illness that required the marriage to be delayed in the first place). Given that Diego's vow was that he would settle down for his wife (essentially, Zorro would not ride so long as he was married), it seemed like a way to make Diego single again (and thus able to be Zorro without breaking his oath) and have an excuse to stay single for a while, as the Zorro series was written at the tail end of the Edwardian era, when remarrying could be a fraught business, from a social standpoint. By the same token, it would also given McCulley a chance to introduce a new romantic interest but have it come across as unseemly if they just get married right away, laying the groundwork for future stories by carving out time for Zorro to be Zorro while also fitting into reader expectations of character motivations/behavior given the social standards of the era. All of this was so encouraging I was willing to overlook Bernardo - who's very specifically been described as both deaf and mute for three whole books - suddenly having an unexplained medical thing that makes him able to speak, all while his miraculous recovery of hearing goes totally unremarked.
But then McCulley ruins it all by re-revealing Diego's identity as Zorro at the end of the story. Just...what the fuck, I don't even know anymore. If the next book were easy to get my hands on, I might have read it just out of curiosity to see how he tries to fix it this time, but it's not and the series isn't good enough for me to waste the time (it doesn't seem to be available through major retailers) or money (used copies are currently sitting at about $20 on the sites I checked) hunting down a 70+ year old book. I do have other Zorro stories to read (pastiches in the same way many authors have written Holmes stories), and hopefully those will do the first superhero more justice. ...more
Zorro Rides Again, third the original series by Johnston McCulley, sees Zorro still unmarried and after a huge time skip: three whole years since the Zorro Rides Again, third the original series by Johnston McCulley, sees Zorro still unmarried and after a huge time skip: three whole years since the ending of The Further Adventures of Zorro. Apparently it is because Lolita took so desperately ill that, even though she couldn't say marriage vows, she could still travel back to Spain to receive treatment. Despite how suspension-of-disbelief breaking that is, it's really just a pretext for McCulley to still have his main character still be unmarried, and thus able to be Zorro. In this book, Zorro needs to ride because some imposter has been going around dressed in the cloak and mask abusing all the people Zorro was famous for helping - namely: natives, women, and the poor - and everyone thinks that Diego has gone mad if he's doing this. Diego takes up the mask once more to catch the imposter, who turns out to be the new commander, a man of many motive: revenge, as he was a close friend of Captain Ramon; greed, as he's been promised reward by the governor for ruining Zorro; and jealousy, as he's trying to force a newly-returned-from-Spain Lolita to marry him instead of her betrothed.
This story was...okay. The whole 'there's an imposter Zorro' is a pretty common trope throughout Zorro media, so I wasn't surprised to see it in the original stories. However - and these are my twenty-first century sensibilities peeking through - the plotting and characterization are not great. McCulley wrote himself into a corner with the ending of Mark/Curse, when Zorro's identity was revealed to everyone and he vowed that, as a married man, he would ride as Zorro no more. Unfortunately, that means that, in subsequent stories, he has to write around his main character no longer having a secret identity - which opens up some story possibilities, but closes off a lot of others - and needing to be unmarried to maintain his status as a man of honour (because riding as Zorro after his marriage would mean breaking his solemn word). Thus we are starting to see increasingly unlikely plot devices to avoid the romance that the entire first book set up and the second book expanded on; I'm almost not sure I want to see what the next book, The Sign of Zorro, does. But I do own Sign so I will read it, though I will probably not read any more of McCulley's original Zorro stories unless the quality begins to vastly improve. As with a lot of old fiction, these are interesting views into the past, but that doesn't mean I particularly enjoy the time spent there. ...more
The Further Adventures of Zorro, sequel to The Mark or Zorro (as it became popularly known) / The Curse of Capistrano (its original title), picks up sThe Further Adventures of Zorro, sequel to The Mark or Zorro (as it became popularly known) / The Curse of Capistrano (its original title), picks up shortly after the end of the first book. As the first book ends with Don Diego Vega being revealed as Zorro, I had guessed that this book would either reboot the series (pretending the reveal never happened) or would be set in the period before Zorro's identity became known (a la The Hound of the Baskervilles). I didn't expect - and it was an unpleasant surprise to find - that this book picks up the night before Diego and Lolita Pulido's wedding, with Los Angeles being raided on pirates on the behalf of an apparently-not-dead-after-all Captain Ramon (who had been all but stated as dead in the final events of Mark/Curse, considering the extended discussion of whether or not his death should be considered murder or the unfortunate by lawful result of a duel, but who was resurrected for plot purposes). The pirates raid the village, abducting Lolita as Ramon's share of the loot, which of course sets the course for Diego to 'become' Zorro once more to save her, followed by all his loyal caballeros.
Though it sounds like this book should have a greater focus on swashbuckling action than Mark did, that was not the case. Seeing as Zorro's taking on a whole crew of pirates by himself and/or the caballeros are trying to take on an entire encampment where they are outnumbered three to one, there's a lot of running to avoid capture, actually being captured, and bemoaning being captured in this story. Disappointingly, there's not a whole lot of emphasis on the supposed cunning of the fox, either; Diego and his posse tend to just attack the pirates head on and it's Lolita who has some (very limited) time in the spotlight actually thinking out a plan more complex than 'use sword to slash bad man until dead.'
All in all, I didn't like this book very much at all. I sincerely hope the rest of McCulley's original series is better....more
Shoggoths in Traffic is a book that originally caught my eye because I needed an anthology for a reading challenge. Having finished it, I can happily Shoggoths in Traffic is a book that originally caught my eye because I needed an anthology for a reading challenge. Having finished it, I can happily say that I absolutely loved this collection. All of the stories were at least good, and I particularly liked these ones:
- A Different Kind of Place, about vaccination vs. the zombie apocalypse in a small town - Shoggoths in Traffic, about wizards and suddenly recruited bystanders preventing the summoning on an interdimensional monster via GPS routed traffic - Brickomancer, where witches and occultists do their best to maintain protective sigils even as rapidly gentrifying areas tear them down and paint them over - The Placement Agency, where people from the far future have their own solution to the Hitler dilemma - The Boneyard, about one person in a world where magic no longer exists and the choice they must make to leave it that way or revive it - That Faraway Kingdom, about a family who must decide what to do about the interdimensional portal that appeared in the back of pantry - The Alien from Verapaz, an examination of how a Superman-like cape would have been treated if he wasn't apparently white - The Suggestion, about a how someone with inherited powers goes about, or shouldn't go about, correcting what they see as previous abuses of the power - and Zombie Capitalism, where a woman questions why the zombie apocalypse is deliberately being allowed to continue (because it's good for major companies' profits)
Most of the stories in this collection are standalone, though a few (like Tides and On the Eve of the Fall of Habesh) seem to take place in the same universe, but are told from different perspectives.
I cannot recommend this collection enough; it is AWESOME....more
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