Goodbye, Flash Gordon; I Hardly Knew Ye

The Space Circus by Con Steffanson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm just glad to be done, really.

I bought the first three novels online about 4 years ago. I was curious about the old-timey pulp fiction of Flash Gordon. I wasn't expecting much, and yet I still overestimated the quality of these books.

I finished the first, gave it a compassionate 3 stars when it really was about a 1-1.5, then for some reason read the second a few months later. Not any better. I get it; the novels are based on actual comics, the type found in the newspaper, which meander in weird ways and have very different expectations from most novels. You hope there'll be some other charm to make up for the really terrible plot, but nope. Nope.

After 4 years, I finally decided to finish the third book (so that I can sell them or give them away as a starter set for someone else) and I have to admit it deserves, or nearly deserves, the 3 stars I gave all of them. It's still a terrible plot, but it's at least moderately entertaining. Reads quick. The good guys win. The plot holes are so thick on the ground they aren't worth thinking about, in any of these books, and the character development is so rudimentary that it doesn't deserve the term, but at least this felt more like an action story. Or maybe my expectations had just been lowered enough. I dunno.

All of these books have one of my top 3 (or bottom 3, I guess) least favorite tropes--where the very capable, brilliant, amazing main characters get caught over and over and then escape (or are rescued) over and over. They are in the hands of their enemies most of the book, completely at their mercy, and probably should be dead many times over. (Doc Savage uses this same trope, and it always makes me sigh.)

I guess Star Trek does it, too. Getting caught flat-footed so often takes a lot of the shine off of the super-capable characters, making them seem like just regular joes getting fumbled around by fate. I don't like it.

I won't read any more of these, but I still like pulp, for some reason, and I want to find more good stuff. I'll read a few more Doc Savage books, probably. I'll read a few more Tarzans and Princess of Mars type books by Burroughs. I'll track down some more of Howard's Solomon Kane and El Borak. And I'll read a few more Rogue Angel books, which are actually pretty well done. Probably find some other interesting pulp novels.

But Flash Gordon, for me, is all done.

Unless I find a collection of the actual comics, because that sounds pretty cool...... :-)

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