The Black Tower (1988) is full of forced action and lost opportunity. In any event, I thank the Goodreads Sword & Sorcery groupread that enabled me to revisit a series I thought I missed out on. If you like to be constantly bait-n-switched without reason, then this book is for you. Since it is the anchor for the series, I don't plan on reading more.The Concept: Set ~1870, the aristocratic Englishman Major Clive Folliot goes exploring across the world for his missing brother Neville. The premise

I read this series in high school, and apparently loved it, because when I found it on the ol' Kindle, I gave it another go. Richard A. Lupoff managed to perfectly capture the essence of his main character, to the point where his prose is stilted, unpleasant and voluminous, as you would find in the journal of a major in Her Majesty's army. I found myself repeatedly backing up and re-reading passages because it was not immediately clear what had just happened, why the character went from scaling

This really does read very much like an early-20th century American or British pulp fiction, at least for the first half of the book, which covers the main character travelling from England to Africa. There are aspects of it I find disturbing, such as the main character declaring his undying love for his fiance back home and then popping a boner for every character with breasts for the rest of the book, but that's true to the genre.Frankly, if the other books in the series were written by the sa...

The Dungeon was a series conceived of by author Phillip José Farmer, and written by Richard A. Lupoff (vol. 1 & 6), Bruce Coville (vol. 2), Charles de Lint (vol 3 & 5), and Robin W. Bailey (vol. 4). As I’ve been working my way through the works of de Lint, and had come across used copies of various volumes for years, I finally decided to give the series a try this month, which was a pretty good decision as I was introduced to it’s protagonist (and this week’s genre character) Major Clive Folliot...

This is my fourth time reading this book in 20 years or so. There are 5 other books in the series but for some reason or another i have never gotten around to read the others. The first time i couldn't find them and after i bought the rest it seems like once i read book one, something prevents me to getting back to the series. I'd really recommend it if you're looking for a weird scifi tale about parallel worlds and time traveling adventures. I have read that the other books in the series are no...

The Dungeon starts off well enough with an interesting concept — and then comes the casual racism. I’m not sure if the goal in 1988 was to write how a 19th century Englishman would have treated other cultures and religions, but regardless it doesn’t stand well with me in 2020.

When you read this book at age nineteen, amid the sound of a piano coming from another room, the warm sweet splash of cheap wine in your throat and the excitement of a fresh cigarette inside, safe from the rain, it's romantic. The book itself is full of romance, but it's the act of reading it - this story - that feels romantic. As an adolescent, at least. Here, as a grown-up, it didn't quite feel the same.Back then all I thought about was getting laid and getting drunk. So of course I wanted to

I'm a little bewildered at my four-star memories and my two-star present experience: it emulates the Scientific Romance Pulp tradition of a long preamble before "it starts", and even afterwards it is satisfied with throwing a lot of _mysterious_ stuff at you--plot arc stuff and recurring characters that figure into later parts of the series--rather than _exciting_ or _amazing_ stuff. For every lunatic anthropophagous hydra-thing battle on the Bridge of Doom, there's a sedate village encounter th...

It's OKJust OK. Doubt I'll read the other books in the series. The characters and story lack depth and did not hold my interest.

This is a series that stuck with me as well. I've read the entire series about 3 times now. I don't understand all the hate for book 6 (though it's very common among readers to dislike it), book 4 bothered me the most. The language of the spider, Shriek, changed drastically in that one, but the story line was strong enough to over come it, but because it's an easy world to dive into, to imagine yourself in the adventure (the time of book where you daydream off into the world and don't even reali...

I read this years and years ago, possibly pre-high school, and remembered enjoying it. I don't even remember where I saw it more recently - likely some used book store, but I've had it sitting on my shelves for about two years now. I figured it was time to read it.There's a saying that you can never go home again. It may have been better if I had not picked this one back up, but, I did still enjoy it. I'll likely keep going - if only because book 2 is in the same volume I purchased.

It's been about 20 years since I actually read these books but my impressions have really stuck with me so I'm going to review the first and the last and give my recollections of the series as a whole. This series has an unusual style, a shared world created by Philip José Farmer and 6 volumes written by 4 other authors. This first volume and for the most part the next 4 are a great mix of pulp scifi, fantasy dungeon crawl and adventure mystery, as Clive Foliott 19th century minor English noblem...

About as male power fantasy as you can get. Clive, busy frolicking with his lady decided to go on adventure, gets hit on by ladies, gets in and out of trouble, spirited away to a magical realm where he gets hit on by more ladies (one of whom, his granddaughter from the future who would be totally cool with it if he decided to get it on with her apparently), everyone looks to him automatically for guidance, basically everyone except him and his man crush are pathetic, he easily topples foes with

Bought the six book series a while back at a used book store. Finally decided to pull the first from the shelf and give it a go. I liked it. It's not the usual fantasy fiction I enjoy, and definitely not my favourite, but I thought the story unique and entertaining.It's easy to be put off by some of the things the characters say or how they react to other characters or situations, but then you need to remember the time period of each character. And there are plenty of different time periods to c...

7/10. Prefiero al Farmer de CF, pero esta saga de fantasía (6 libros) se llevo yb 7/10 en todas y cada uno de ellos. Entretenida, vamos.

it was very slow but the weirdness was very appreiciated.

The start of a very interesting writing experiment. Six books written by five different authors, the first and last written by the same author, with a sixth as supervisor and editor.It passes through the "real" world of 1868 rather quickly and adds fantastic details to it even sooner, so you don't really have time to notice whether it's pictured realistically or not, but that's all good; it doesn't matter anyway.Clive isn't the kind of character that I could like. A stuck-up 33 year old officer

This is not written by Philip Jose Farmer- now that you understand that, on to the book. It took me a bit to get over the fact that this is a series of books based on an idea of Farmer's written by different authors. By book 2, it feels like a cheap trick, but back to book 1. I loved the voice of the book- the 19th century characters thrown into a strange and ugly world without explanation or reason. The search for the missing twin feels lame after the hero suffers so much and still goes forward...

La serie de la Mazmorra intenta ser un libro de Philip J. Farmer sin serlo, y se nota. Algunas ideas interesantes, un aire de aventura que recuerda por momentos al Mundo del Rio... pero sin llegar a alcanzarlo. La sucesión de autores en la serie tampoco ayuda, de forma que la primera y la última pueden casi leerse de forma unitaria sin recurrir a las demás.En la primera novela seguimos al bien definido protagonista, un héroe victoriano, en una enloquecida aventura a un lugar imposible. Se plante...

I'm not sure I have ever felt so neutral towards a protagonist. On one hand you could see Clive Folliet had been handed some bad hands, but on the other being born to a well to do English family at the height of the British Empire, really wasn't such a bad thing (even if you were just the second born). Still I persevered through the book, and somehow towards the end, and in about the last 50 pages I really got into it. I've bought all six of them at a used book store, so I suppose I'll be on to