Reviews for Captains Outrageous - For Doom the Bell Tolls

The average rating for Captains Outrageous - For Doom the Bell Tolls based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-02-08 00:00:00 Robert Ward review of Roy V. Young's Captains Outrageous Or, For Doom the Bell Tolls by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - February 8, 2013 There were several reasons why I chose to read this. I'd recently noticed that there're bks whose titles & plots are rewrites of other more famous bks & I decided to read some of these to explore this genre. I've already read & reviewed 2 of them: Bruce Hale's The Malted Falcon ( ) & Anne Capeci's The Maltese Dog ( ). I thought Captains Outrageous might be in the same genre insofar as the full title references both Rudyard Kipling's Captains Courageous & Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls. Since I'd read both of these when I was young, I wanted to see what Young's apparently humorous fantasy remake of them might be. Furthermore, I'd just read & reviewed Rudyard Kipling & John Brunner's The Science Fiction Stories of Rudyard Kipling so the time seemed right for revisiting Kipling a bit more. I've been reading these bks w/ the title references in order of the age that the writing is aimed at. Captains Outrageous might be aimed at adolescents or young adults. The resemblance of Captains Outrageous to its namesakes, unlike w/ the Hale & Capeci bks, is minimal. As in the Kipling, there's a spoiled wealthy young male thrust into difficult circumstances & maturing as a result. This is standard fare for a coming-of-age plot. The resemblance to the Hemingway is even more tenuous: fighters on a mission. In other words, a hero's journey. The resemblance to Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers is, perhaps, a little more obvious. The phrase "captains courageous" is even used once on p 67 but, all in all, the plot of Captains Outrageous veers closest to that of Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings trilogy - perhaps the most famous fantasy story. Mainly, Young just likes to make puns - something that I can thoroughly appreciate insofar as I'm a homonymphonemiac - a neologism I coined that means a person-who-compulsively-makes-puns. In an editor's note on the inside back cover it's stated that "Woven almost invisibly into the text of this book are literally dozens of puns. You may enjoy looking for them. Examples: rock and roll groups, individuals, and movements; himself, plus two friends; his editor and his literary agent; national television personages; Georgia Tech nostalgia; and combinations formed from partial last names of famous science fiction writers. One brief passage also includes most of the best-known books of Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov." I didn't 'go out of my way' to seek these puns but quite a few of them did pop up at me: "Snick! Cropple! Pap!", p 41, is an example of a pun that serves no apparent plot-&-content-compelling-purpose, it's just a pun for its own sake. "Krizz! Rispee!" For those not familiar w/ the ad, what we have here is a pun off a Rice Krispies cereal commercial. In some or most instances, the puns are a bit more well-integrated into the story: ""You know," the red-beard noted, "that door is nor properly hung." ""Neither, by all reports," Trebor irresistibly injected, "was Bosamp." "The barbarian squinched, wishing he'd thought of it first, then continued. "The hinges are on the outside - bad thinking! Not only that, but they've used nail diamonds to attach them, rather than screws as any craftsman knows they should. I'll bet we can pry the door hinges right off!" He looked expectantly at the loremaster. "I'm sure it moved." ""I doubt it," Trebor mused, "but I also doubt the spell, whatever it is, extends to the nails and hinges themselves - a flaw in its design. They are, after all, made of iron and should be immune to sorcerous mutation. It is - dare I say it? - ironic." ""I'm just going to have to steel myself to your remarks," Dword retaliated." (p46) ""Poor Wendy," Sir Dudley sighed mournfully. "None of this would have happened if that roc hadn't eaten him. Stuck on top of his tower, between a roc and a hard place, as it were."" (p 117) ""Do the Gods suffer from amentia?"" (p 288) "Amentia" = mental retardation - but it can also be yet another pun: amen + dementia. Nice. The Bell is called "The Belle Dame Sans Merci" (p 290), the beautiful woman w/o mercy (in my, no doubt, bad translation) - a pun off of "bell" & "belle". "[A] call to harms" (p 296), a call to arms; "Terror infirma" (p 296), Terra firma. In a sense, this plethora of puns & their references shows us where Young's cultural knowledge lies. Perhaps not everything he refers to is done as an homage but I suspect that most of it is: "Help me, Dalibosch!" (p 51) Salvador Dali + Hieronymous Bosch - 2 great painters of grotesque imagination. ""'Tis a long way to swim, is it not, Salmon Dave?" Fishie number one said. ""Most terribly far, Shad N. Jeremy!" replied Fishie number two." (p 140) Sam and Dave & Chad and Jeremy - 2 musical acts many younger readers mightn't recall. ""Try some of this - hoooo! It's Crosby Stills' Young Mash, an elixir of singular properties."" (p 161) Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young - yet another musical act. It seems that Young's taste might lay in the realm of simple harmonies: "Best to keep to the simple stuff" (p 161). "[V]oracious Rugayrokstaar of the dreadlocks" (p 254): Reggae Rockstar. Captains Outrageous is a sword & sorcery bk & a well known s&s story is that of Conan the Barbarian written by Robert Howard: "It looked so easy in The Illustrated Adventures of Sir Robert the Howard!" (p 216) Young evokes a larger place outside the immediate narrative by making reference to things implied to be part of the greater environ of the story: "Trebor jumped up like a Fusistanian horned gnorlox in heat" (p 120), "The wizard chomped and smacked like a Korian lovedog" (p 126), "Dword's eyes bulged wider than a Gormousian banker's at the sight of a bare coin" (p 162), "letting the scintillas flail across him like the disciplining whack of a Korian lovemaster" (p 171), "Guards seated like a Gormousian bloater in a swelterbelter" (p 209), "It's worse than being a Korian bird-eunuch waist-deep in feathered pudenda!" (p 230). I'm often interested in how bk covers relate to the contents. Often, in mass-market paperbacks especially, the cover is a lurid come-on only halfway related to the story. One imagines that the artist who makes the cover art doesn't necessarily read the bk, they're presumably given a synopsis to work from. In this case, the wizard is shown on the cover holding the Mallet of Doom about to strike the Bell at the Top of the World. Only the mallet is made of wood & isn't "a magnificently crafted, platinum-leafed Hammer of surpassing, exotic beauty." (p 260) The wizard is shown as a fully lizard-like creature. In the story, he's a human undergoing a transformation not as complete as what the cover shows. & this brings us to further money-making strategies of some fantasy & SF bks: the setting-up of the reader for the sequel(s). I don't know whether there's a sequel (or a prequel) to Captains Outrageous but the possibility of a complete transformation of the wizard sure leads that way. I wdn't mind. Funny, tho, my own tastes lean toward bks written purely for the sake of themselves - bks that don't have an eye on sequels & prequels to come or not to come depending on the success of the 'pilot' novel. Much of what I consider to be the 'trashier' fantasy & SF is so business-driven that the transparency of it takes away from whatever literary qualities the work might otherwise have. All in all, this was geeky good fun.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-06-16 00:00:00 David King This book is a decidedly acquired taste - a taste which happens to be near and dear to my heart. This is a book which is based on the fun character exploits from a pen-and-paper roleplaying game (RPG) - which means that if you love RPGs, love fantasy, and love puns, you will love this book. It is clear from the tone of the book that the author clearly had a blast playing RPGs with his friends, who are immortalized as characters in the book. As someone who is a game master and runs RPGs weekly, I can definitely relate. And as I love reading session reports fro other RPG session, this book reads like one long session report, but without any reference to dice. However, the book does get rather meta at times, with the Gamesmaster and game references... not to mention it starts with the three heroes playing an RPG. But you don't have to be a lover of RPGs to enjoy the book. If you are a lover of puns, this book has you covered! My favorite: Crosby Still's Young Mash. I'm still groaning over it. Having been raised on a healthy diet of puns from my dad as a child, they are a necessary part of daily intake. So, definitely an acquired taste, but a whole lot of fun.