Another nice pic of J. B. Dix, but his hat looks more Aussie than fedora-ish. I like it! Hopefully the writer will just simply pen him getting a new hat, instead of having us fans believe that one can truly still hold on to the same old hat through these limitless, harrowing adventures. 

Man, that artwork is amazing.

Hey did anyone else notice in the back cover blurb that it says two centuries of fall out instead of just one . Can the editors change that ?

Posted By twinsrule26 on 3/31/2013 12:41:07 AM
Hey did anyone else notice in the back cover blurb that it says two centuries of fall out instead of just one . Can the editors change that ?

If you check out the wikki you will see that DL is currently set some time after 2102 (prodigal return) so technically it is two centuries since skydark:

2001 to 2101 = 1 century
2102+ start of second century

so its technically correct.

Jim

There seems to be a post from Maximus missing here? My book has also turned up

RE: missing post - the nature of the problem that has been plaguing the site recently is that the database had stopped growing to accommodate new things. As natural clean-up processes happened to clear out expired logs and such, space would free up for a bit to allow new posts briefly. It would not surprise me if some recent posts got eaten in the past few weeks. Sorry. The good news is the problem is resolved now.

All gravy

Well, lets see if this one posts.

 

The latest DL by Victor Milan is so far very, very good. I love that he is seemingly paying tribute again to the original author by creating something akin to the early books such as Time Nomads, where Ryan gets food poisoning and the reader gets transported to his early days with meeting up and riding with the legendary Trader.

 

Storm Breakers does something along those lines, and hardcore fans love it!

When J. B. is shot in the chest, his mind goes back in time and shows the fanbase just how he met up with the Trader and the War Wags. Very solid and interesting storyline, and I can't wait to read the last 90 pages or so to finish.

My try now.
I have yet to start this one, it is next on the pile after book 2 and 3 of the morningstar plague trilogy.

Jim

I just sent my review in for Storm Breakers.

I liked it a lot, even though it had a few problems. Overall, I felt it was better than the last 2 books, but not as solid as Milan's last entry - Nemesis. 

Just approved that review.

A Good Read ,I liked how the author explained some of JB's back story and finally gave us a reason why he hangs onto the hat. The mutie frog thing was a bit far fetched if you ask me but it did make the story more interesting . I thought Mildred was believeable as a worried lover .

Absolutely, Twinsrule. I also like how he didn't, in the beginning, explain everyone's background for the millionth time. No need for that anymore.

 

Loved the backstory. Anything with Trader is gold. Solid storytelling about his fedora and his first love. Makes the characters more human, then just the typical chilling machines. 

 

These are the types of situations I like the companions to be in more often. Getting wounded and having their asses handed to them every once in a while keeps it just that bit more realistic and dramatically mounted with tension. There have been WAY too many books where the companions chill everything in sight without a scratch. Becomes monotonous after a while. These talented writers need to ramp it up to another level in this series. Broaden the situations a bit more than fighting the local bad baron. Winning each and every fight.

Quite liked this one. We seem to be on a good book spree at the minute. I also loved that there was no boring "Intro". Trader always welcome. When I read the blurb at the front I thought he had been brought back.
Liked the dual storylines. Muties were a bit daft.

All in all keep up the good work chaps.

I was rereading this thread and I noticed that what I posted about in my first post .The two centuries instead of one on the back cover was changed on the book I bought to just one century . I wonder if someone read my post and changed the book before it was printed ?

A  cover run is printed a year in advance so that the sales force has something to show the buyers. I would say that the version you saw was a cover proof, or one of the sales force covers and that the error was caught in-house and corrected in time. It is impossible to make a change to a cover at the last minute, as they are printed so far in advance. I used to vet the cover copy before it was printed--not anymore. I recall one cover I was sent after the fact and the "Trader" was the "Tracker." I pointed that out and was told that the cover had already been printed and that it would be too costly to correct. Arrgghh.

Posted By Wordsmith-reprise on 7/31/2013 8:48:15 AM
A  cover run is printed a year in advance so that the sales force has something to show the buyers. I would say that the version you saw was a cover proof, or one of the sales force covers and that the error was caught in-house and corrected in time. It is impossible to make a change to a cover at the last minute, as they are printed so far in advance. I used to vet the cover copy before it was printed--not anymore. I recall one cover I was sent after the fact and the "Trader" was the "Tracker." I pointed that out and was told that the cover had already been printed and that it would be too costly to correct. Arrgghh.

you now know I am going to have to read the backs of all the trader books to see which one it was!!

Jim

Can some one please tell me why for several pages J.B is called johnnie?

is it because...

I fell asleep trying to read this and erased a whole character from my memory...
VM tried to give JB a new name...
VM forgot JB was his name in the whole frog mess...
none of the above...

I am liking the JB back story but cant help feeling the character of Trader is a total miss. The rest of the story with Ryan and co. is at best an average seen it before re hash of several previous stories where they again fail to notice the obvious and say things like "isn't it quiet" just before all hell breaks loose.

The frog mutants are just plain silly and its so unlikely that JB was in the same area twice in his life without making mention of them the second time. Or again did I fall asleep and miss something?

Jim

PS excuse any spelling mistakes or random full stops, I am typing this from my phone using a massive 2 point font whilst I wait for a train.

Yeah Jim, I think I mention some of those problems in my review.

I did notice Johnnie being thrown around, but just chalked it up to a nick name in the Trader days. No big deal there.

 

The frog muties were weirdly introduced. And yes, the writer should have mentioned whether Ryan and J. B. had seen their like before. Totally ignored and seemingly shoe-horned in. OK, Milan forgot the attention to detail on that.

And I think in my review I mentioned that thiss tory was, overall, nothing groundbreaking or new, in terms of storyline. But I did like the background of J. B. His first tough love and how he got the fedora thing going was interesting to me. I love the war wag years, so anything about those 10 years that have not been written, the myriad of stories, I am interested in.

 

I think I understand now the connection between JB's frog folk and the frog folk of the others. JB's dream world was a mixture of the "now" he was aware of before being wounded and the "then" of his memory, the two got mixed up as they tend to do in our own dreams producing what we believe at the time of dreaming it to be the truth.

It was still nothing special and only kept me reading it to see what happened with JB in his dream world. The rest of the story was just a weak crutch for an otherwise short story.

Jim

Yeah, Jim, you're spot-on with your comments.

 

It was a mish mash of truth and fever dreams. But the frog muties must've been real, because Ryan and the rest were battling them in 'true life' so to speak.

Hi all, Haven't posted for a while, but the J. B. Dix part of this story has been great. Reminds me of the earlier days of the series.
I do think that the headline from this book should read'

"Ryan pops Korn!"

The frog muties were an homage to HP Lovecraft (Shadow over Innsmouth) - I can't believe no one caught that. As muties, they are absurd, but as a whitecoat experiment, it makes more sense. Although he already used the "we're victims of a genetic experiment" thing in Haven's Blight. He also used the "we have to rescue the baron's daughter" plotline in Playfair's Axiom. I guess he just ran short of ideas this time around...

And yeah, they missed obvious things like the ambush, the cannies (I knew what was going on as soon as he told us they never opened their mouths), etc. JB wasn't with the group until the end, so he couldn't have told them about the place - that reference to "Johnny" when Ricky and Jak were in the tunnels was a mistake the editor missed. (That's another thing - JB never told *anyone* his full name - even Trader never knew it. He didn't mention it until the second or third book, when Ryan asked him straight out.)

Milan's characterizations bug me - he overemphasizes everyone's character flaws: Krysty's idealism and compassion, Ryan's ruthlessness, Mildred's cranky nature, etc. He also plays up the romance between Ryan and Krysty too much - they've been together long enough to know when it's okay to be lovey-dovey, and when it's time to get serious, but those two are always screwing around.

Despite its flaws, this book wasn't bad, once it got going. The first 75 pages or so were excessively verbose and just... discombobulated (that's the best word I can think of), but after that it gets on track and becomes more interesting. The occasional flash of humor adds to the read - I like Ricky and his enthusiasm and eagerness to please; he's definitely an improvement over Dean.

I am reading the book now and I totally picked up on "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". The weird thing is that Lovecraft lore exists in the deathlands as both fiction and reality. Early in the series mentions lovecraft as they are walking along the east coast and then later, in the book with the vampires, they find an actual copy of the Necronomicon. So I for one, being a Lovecraft fan am considering the frog muties as actual Deep Ones, not nuke or whitecoat muties. Though I would suspect the earth shaker bombs would have made rhley rise.

In OUTLANDERS: Shadow Scourge, the Cerberus Team squares off against an entity that may (or may not be) a physical manifestation of Nyarlthotep.

I think Doc made mention of Lovecraft early on - it was Dectra Chain, right?

I'll have to look at Bloodlines again - I can't believe I missed that one.

I thought they were Deep Ones too, until Milan revealed they were actually a whitecoat experiment (though he never goes into details).

Posted By Wordsmith-reprise on 7/31/2013 8:48:15 AM
A  cover run is printed a year in advance so that the sales force has something to show the buyers. I would say that the version you saw was a cover proof, or one of the sales force covers and that the error was caught in-house and corrected in time. It is impossible to make a change to a cover at the last minute, as they are printed so far in advance. I used to vet the cover copy before it was printed--not anymore. I recall one cover I was sent after the fact and the "Trader" was the "Tracker." I pointed that out and was told that the cover had already been printed and that it would be too costly to correct. Arrgghh.

I found the book with Tracker instead of Trader on the back cover it was "Time Nomads" .

I agree with several posts this book would fit in with earlier story lines. give us more like this.