Welcome to the Reviews page of the Nautilus Engine. 
     You’ll find comments on our favorite books and movies, but whether the subject in question is a brand-new release, an age-old classic or a cult fav that may have gotten past you doesn’t matter too much to us—we all read a lot, and watch tons of movies, and, right or wrong, we are all opinionated s.o.b.s and have many things to say.  But if you take us at our word and go right out to purchase copies of everything we recommend, well… that would just make the world a better place… 

Tarzan of the Apes/ The Return of Tarzan- Edgar Rice Burroughs
     Some stories are just essential, and some characters so iconic that it’s difficult to imagine the world of fantastic literature without them.  When Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote the first Tarzan novel for Argosy Magazine, back in 1912, he of course had no way of knowing the profound impact the jungle hero would have.  Movies, comic books and television shows would follow in the decades afterward, but none of them would ever come close to the sheer magic of Burrough’s books.
     The basic story is familiar to just about everyone by now, I imagine: Lord and Lady Clayton, stranded in the jungles of Africa after a shipwreck, give birth to young John before both of them perish.  The baby is then raised by apes, and eventually becomes their lord.  Tarzan of the Apes traces this fantastic history, and follows Tarzan as he encounters humans for the first time, black and white, fights for his life against various jungle beasts, and meets Jane Porter, whom he falls in love with. 
     The first book ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, and The Return of Tarzan picks up immediately where Tarzan of the Apes leaves off, chronicling the Ape-man’s adventures in Paris before taking him back to the jungle to rescue Jane and brave the lost city of Opar. 
     In all, Burroughs would write twenty-four Tarzan adventures, almost all of them thrilling.  But these first two are ground-breaking, setting a new standard for heroic action, and virtually creating the concept of the super hero. Heath Lowrance

The Last Coin- James P. Blaylock
     Blaylock belongs to that circle of writers out in sunny CA that also includes Tim Powers, and was mentored early on by the legendary Philip K. Dick.  His novel, The Last Coin, is a quirky “real-world fantasy”, and is one of my favorites, due in large part to the central character.  Andrew Vanbergen is a relatively normal guy, perhaps a little eccentric, with a penchant for getting himself into trouble and making matters worse by attempting to cover his tracks whenever any of his little schemes go awry—which they almost always do.  All of us know someone like Andrew; in fact, some of us are Andrew. 
     He comes into possession of a very rare coin, and before he knows it he’s confronting the bizarre Pennyman, who wants the coin for his own mysterious purposes.  Pennyman already has twenty-nine of these coins, and the one Andrew has—the Last Coin—is all he needs to put his plan into motion. 
     The Last Coin is an odd book, charming and funny and adventurous, and Blaylock is wonderfully insightful about the quirks of decent but eccentric people. Heath Lowrance

The List of 7- Mark Frost
     Mark Frost is fairly well-known as the co-creator, with David Lynch, of the cult tv series Twin Peaks.  But in The List of 7, written in 1993, Frost displays a remarkable talent for straight-ahead narrative and relentless action.
     Frost wastes absolutely no time in throwing his hero, a young pre-Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle, into the thick of a sinister plot that would make the Baker Street consulting detective himself proud.  When a séance ends in blood and murder, Doyle is forced on the run, pursued by supernatural creatures.  His only alley is the enigmatic Jack Sparks, who claims to be a special agent for Her Majesty the Queen but who in fact may be an escapee from a lunatic asylum.
     The book is fast-paced, clever, peopled with great characters and well-researched bits of Victoriana.  But the real emphasis is on breakneck adventure as Doyle and Sparks seek to uncover the villain’s evil plot and prevent the overthrow of the British throne. 
     The List of 7 is as thrilling as an Indiana Jones movie, with all the atmosphere of the Holmes tales.  Highly recommended for fans of great adventure stories. Heath Lowrance

The Drive-In- Joe R. Lansdale
     Sub-titled A B-Movie with Blood and Popcorn, The Drive-In is a trashy, insane romp through Lansdale’s beautifully warped mind, and a sort of love letter to all those bargain basement flicks some of us watched religiously growing up. 
     Jack and his friends go to the Orbit Drive-In in East Texas for the all-night horror show, but the horror turns real when a fiery red comet—with teeth—descends on the fun, and leaves the Drive-In patrons trapped, with no way out.  Things fall apart rapidly, and cannibalism, rape and murder become the norm as the survivors struggle to stay alive.  Then the Popcorn King shows up… and things get really bad.
     Lansdale takes jabs at religious hypocrisy, self-help, and the idea of ‘moral absolutes’ in The Drive-In, but all of that is really beside the point.  This is a seriously funny book about some seriously sick things, infused with a very particular Texan point of view. Heath Lowrance

King Solomon’s Mines- H. Rider Haggard
     Haggard, who spent most of his life in Africa, published King Solomon’s Mines in 1884, and immediately sky-rocketed to fame as one of the world’s great adventure writers.  With Allan Quatermain, the novel’s erstwhile hero, he cemented a type that, unfortunately, would be forever associated with British imperialism.
     That’s a shame, really, because the book is tremendously exciting and Quatermain himself is not that bad a guy, given the time the book was written.  He is a gruff, over the hill elephant hunter, charmingly self-effacing and not really given to heroics.  But when he is drawn into a quest to find the lost diamond mines of Solomon—and his new friend’s missing brother, as well—he is forced into the role of hero, and acquits himself admirably. 
     Quatermain and his comrades face a perilous journey over the desert and an even more perilous climb up to the peaks of the Solomon Mountains before arriving in the fabled Kukuanaland, where a war for the feathered crown is escalating.  Before they can seek the hidden treasure of Solomon, the adventurers must chose sides in the tribal war… and the penalty for choosing the wrong side is death.
     A thrill-ride of a story, it is also surprisingly funny and compassionate. Heath Lowrance

The Island of Dr. Moreau- H.G. Wells
     I should preface this by noting that H.G. Wells is one of my favorite writers, and a great influence on my own meager work.  The sub-genre that we call, somewhat erroneously, “Steam-punk”, owes its entire existence to the novels of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne. 
     The thing is, though… Wells was a better writer than Verne.  You could put that down to the quality of translation of some of Verne’s work, I know, but even in the matters of pacing and plotting and character development, Wells had it all over Verne.
     The Island of Dr. Moreau is a good example.  With its themes of genetic manipulation, ideas about evolution and what being human really constitutes, it was retroactively visionary, and Wells is well-known as a very socially conscious writer for good reason.  But let’s get to the heart of it: the book is fun as hell, creepy, exciting and fast-paced. 
     The story concerns Edward Prendick, shipwrecked and stranded on a strange island filled with horrifying beasts, where he meets the mysterious Dr. Moreau and learns more than he wants to about where exactly those horrifying beasts come from.  Things fall apart quickly after Prendick’s arrival, and it isn’t long before the flimsy social fabric of the beasts rips apart and Prendick is forced to run for his life.
     Wells’ reading public, by and large, wanted his blood after this book.  Many were offended by its thinly-veiled critique of modern society, and wanted more of the fabulous possibilities hinted at in his first novel, The Time Machine.  But time, as always, was on Wells’ side, and The Island of Dr. Moreau is now rightly considered an adventure classic. Heath Lowrance

American Gods- Neil Gaiman
     Much has been said about Neil Gaiman’s ground-breaking work as writer of the acclaimed comic book series (graphic novels, if you prefer), The Sandman, but his work as a novelist so far has shown much more range than the comics ever did.  For me, the most remarkable revelation was his sense of humor.
     That’s not to say American Gods is a comedy; far from it.  It’s a dark, almost hallucinogenic road trip novel that examines the strangeness of our American obsessions: money, internet, power, sex, money, and money.  But the whole story is so shot through with Gaiman’s particular wit and black humor that his semi-outsider critique of our society goes down pretty easy.
     The central character is the unlikely-named Shadow, who upon his release from prison finds himself caught up with a strange one-eyed guy named Wednesday.  Wednesday, Shadow learns, is none other than Odin, the All-Father of Norse mythology, on a quest to gather up as many of the forgotten gods of yore as he can, in preparation for an epic battle against the new gods—gods of American obsessions, fast and young and brutal.
     In many ways, this is one of those “hero’s journey” kind of stories that fans of Joseph Campbell tout so much.  But Gaiman infuses it with so much subtext and so many layers that it’s easy to forget that while reading it.   American Gods is a full, satisfying read that works equally well as a great adventure story and a commentary on the spiritual vacuum of the modern world. Heath Lowrance

Who Fears the Devil?- Manly Wade Wellman
     I first read these stories when I was a kid, maybe ten or twelve years old, and was so captivated by their sheer creepiness and the likeability of the central character that I’ve made a point of coming back to them every three or four years for a re-read. 
     Originally published over a span of about sixteen years, mostly in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, the stories chronicle the adventures of John the Balladeer, a wanderer in the mysterious mountains of North Carolina.  Young John seems to find trouble wherever he goes, in the form of backwoods sorcerers, devil-birds, Civil War-era ghouls, and just about every other variety of evil-natured beasties and humans that you can think of.  Through it all, John perseveres, due mostly to the pure silver strings of his guitar and his own incorruptible nature.
     Wellman informed these terrific stories with his own vast knowledge of Appalachian folklore and ghost stories, and his love for the region and its people is very clear.  In John he created a folk hero, a sort of Sir Galahad of the mountains, who would answer the question “Who fears the Devil?” very simply:  “Not I.” Heath Lowrance

The Color of Magic/The Light Fantastic- Terry Pratchett
     A giant turtle floats through the farthest reaches of space.  On the turtle’s back are four elephants.  And those four elephants hold up the world. 
     This is Discworld, the setting for Terry Prachett’s series of comic fantasy novels that beautifully skewer real-world politics, religion, international relations and just about everything else you can think of, through the prism of a fantasy world that almost—almost—mirrors our own.
     I have no idea how many Discworld stories Pratchett has written so far.  Let’s just say tons, and new ones seem to pop up at an almost mind-boggling speed.  These first two, The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, set the high standards for all that follow.  I’m not generally a ‘laugh out loud’ kind of guy, but Pratchett does the trick for me in these books.
     It starts when Rincewind, the single most inept wizard of all time, finds himself acting as guide for the amazingly naïve tourist Twoflower—and Twoflower’s vicious, carnivorous luggage, called, appropriately enough, Luggage.  Their adventures across Discworld and to the very edge of their known reality happen at a breakneck pace, flinging them from one insane peril to another with hardly a moment to breath, and Rincewind’s constant complaining acts as counterpoint to Twoflower’s almost idiotic optimism.
     Throw in Death Himself—an insecure, uncomfortable sort of fellow—and you have a tale with big intentions and even bigger laughs.  Think Douglas Adams, except more fantasy-oriented and, frankly, quite a bit sharper. Heath Lowrance

City of Truth- James Morrow
     Honesty is always the best policy, right?  Well, no.  Not if you are Jack Sperry, your son has contracted a rare disease, and the only way to save his life is lie, lie, lie so that the boy will have hope enough to find a cure.
     The problem for Jack is that he lives in Veritas, the City of Truth, where everyone has been conditioned to never lie about anything, ever.  Cigarette packages read Warning: The Surgeon General’s Crusade Against This Product May Distract You From The Myriad Other Ways Your Government Fails To Protect Your Health.  Birthday cards say Roses drop dead, Violets do too, With each day life gets shorter, Happy birthday to you.  Jack works as a deconstructionist, destroying art and poetry, since all of the arts are deemed dishonest, unrepresentative of the Truth. 
     It’s in this place where even the most common-place fib is met with harsh punishment, Jack must learn to lie.  Along the way, he discovers others like him, others who have realized that Truth is a harsh and sterile master, and that sometimes beauty and hope are more important than honesty.  Even if beauty and hope are lies. James Morrow is a terrific stylist, funny and observant, and the sly and satirical City of Truth is a great introduction to his work. Heath Lowrance