Sentinels volume 3 - comments

[Shiryu]

I finally finished this today! I only started it last week, since it was unlucky enough to arrive at my place a few days after HP7 (which I now consider the best book ever, but I won't disgress ^^).

Back to Sentinels #3: once again, it makes for a very nice read. As you anticipated, this is much more similar to the 1st book than to the 2nd, and it's definitely action packed!
The pace is very quick throughout the book, probably one of the two things that strikes the most. Ever since the fight in Jameson's office, there is hardly a chapter without a small battle or a struggle or an event of some kind. Things happen at lightning speed, which makes the book very captivating and hard to put down, especially because when a menace seems resolved, another one comes up, even more dangerous.

The other best thing are the characterizations. Every member of the team has some time to shine. Esro is a bit in the shadows, but the reasons for it are explained very well, and Ultraa finally comes across as the powerhouse he is, but also as a symbolic hero incarnating the best ideals of humankind (a bit like Cap).
I also have a distinct feeling that you like writing Pulsar. Narration often evolves around her, and the first chapters, when she finds herself alone, and scared, are quite touching.

Another good thing is that most elements from the previous books come to a conclusion. It's not all of them, Ultraa's past in particular remains a mistery, and in the end we don't see the Rivals quite yet, but this does not represent a problem, because there is already a lot going on.

In fact, at times there seems to be a bit too much going on, which is the main criticism I can bring. A bit like Spider-Man 3, with so many enemies and menaces around, some of them end up being solved too soon or too quickly to be remarkable. This is especially true for the Field Marshal's team, that gets beaten basically at its first confrontation with the Sentinels (who were even lacking Esro and Vanadium) and doesn't quite come across as the menace it should have been.

I have a feeling that, to some extent, this was wanted. The purpose of the Marshal's team seemed to be introducing more characters, like Fury and Wendy, and to increase the sense of loss that surrounded the Sentinels in the previous book (no Esro, no Vanadium, no legal status, no government support etc, they were truly alone). Still, seeing them in action a bit more would have been nice.

The same goes for the Warlord, who, despite showing his tremendous power, didn't appear nearly as important as in the first book, and was dispatched quite quickly. Once again, I guess this was just because this was not his book and other things were happening, but it was a bit sad nonetheless. The surprise ending concerning him and Francisco however improves things a lot and foreshadows what will be coming in future books I suppose.

The Xorexes were clearly the main menace of the book, and this came across very well. Strong, unstoppable, reminding of both the Super Adaptoid and the Awesome Android (and they were not the only Marvel reference in the book of course ;D), their treath appeared very consistent and virtually unstoppable. It was a very nice touch seeing more and more heroes uniting against them, I nearly expected Blitzcrieg to come out any second, but I suppose it would have been difficult to sort him out afterwards.
The way they were stopped was very smart too, albeit a bit too quick. After many chapters of useless fightning, they went down suddenly in a paragraph, and only because of Karbaraak's intervention. The fact that Vanadium was going to override and destroy them made up for this though.

As for the final two menaces, the Elite guard was very interesting, perhaps the most interesting new element of the book after Fury and HW. The members were humbled a bit too easily by the Sentinels, but the battle was stopped in time to make it look more or less like a tie. Besides, the characterization was once again spot on, from their over willingness to fight to the utter dismissing of Mondrian and everybody else. They actually opened the way for my favourite part of the book, when they decorate a growing number of Sentinels in what started like a solemn occasion and developed in comical fashion ;D

Randall Nation was interesting too, but disappointing to some extent. After being presented as the mastermind behind a lot of events, he didn't really do much, once again because of the many other things happening in the book. Oh well...

Final things: Heavyweight is cool! Very nice and funny character! I had the impression you either like him a lot or wanted to show him in a particularly good light, because he has some of the best lines in the book, and often seemed to be the one getting the best results in the fights (against the Circle, the Xorex - before Vanadium arrived - the Elite etc).
Exactly how much control over gravity does he have? is he at Graviton's level, and could he send his enemies into space by stopping the pull of gravity around them completely if he wants to?

Marvel references are always appreciated. Besides the aforementioned Adaptoid, I could also spot some Thanos in the nichilist Warlord, some Firelord in the Elite warrior with a fire staff, some Marvel teams in the names that Pulsar suggests in the end etc

Finally a question about the cover: I can't identify everyone, who are the grey being in front of Ultraa, next to the Warlord, the flame creature attacking Pulsar and the cloaked character in the background?

PS: and when is book 4 coming out? is there going to be another trilogy or just a single book? It's time to see the Rivals, the master plan of the Warlord and to find out everything about Utraa's past!

[Van Plexico]

Shiryu, it absolutely means the world to me to have someone who really knows his stuff reading these books, and who is willing and able to report back with wonderful, detailed analyses. You're worth your weight in gold.

This book hasn't been out very long, and since it's the big climax to the first storyline, I've been very anxious to hear people's reactions to it. I'm very glad you seem to have enjoyed it.

And, as always, your criticisms are imminently fair and reasonable.

A few replies:

I aimed for this book to be shorter and more "action-packed" (as you noted), and while I agree that some of the confrontations happen very quickly, the alternative would have been to make this book even longer than book 2 (A DISTANT STAR), which I don't believe anyone wanted. (Plus it would have cost more for folks to buy it!)

Overall I am exceptionally pleased with the pacing and the way the confrontations and clashes play out in it. This book practically wrote itself, and I was just holding on for dear life, typing literally as fast as I could. (It took me twice as long to copy edit and rewrite the second and third drafts of the thing as it did to create the original draft-- that's how easily it just fell right into place. That is very unusual for me.)

Esro definitely was on the back burner for this book, not only because of story events forcing him (and Mondy) there, but because he had so much of Book 2 to himself, I felt it was time to let Ultraa and Pulsar shine a bit more.

I don't disagree with what you said about the Field Marshal's team. I would have loved to give him more room, but what was interesting to me was to look at what happened to the members of his team once the team itself dissolved-- they were mostly villains, and they scampered away like rats off a sinking ship. So I wanted to focus on how and where they scampered to, and who paid the price for that!

Heavyweight is Bobby's old character, and I'll direct your inquiry to him. I like the guy well enough. I hadn't originally planned to revisit him here, but it just came to me one day in a flash that he was absolutely the key to getting Pulsar into the Jameson situation. It was perfect-- and given their previous history, it made for lots of great dialogue and conflict.

The cover is an interesting story, and I go into this in some detail in the WIDESCREEN book later this fall. In a nutshell: The cover for this book (I call it "the green book") was originally intended for WHEN STRIKES THE WARLORD. But I liked the picture that's now on WARLORD so much, and it seemed so much better suited to book 1, that I switched them out. This green cover seemed more appropriate for a big, climactic finish, so it became APOCALYPSE RISING's cover. But the guys on the front are all in Book 1: Mage, Field Marshal, Warlord, Liberator (drawn incorrectly as a stone monster instead of a stone heroic man), and Kabaraak up in the top right.

If I had it to do over again, I'd have a couple of characters switched out (add Mondy and a different villain; subtract Liberator and Mage, etc). But I like it too much to tamper with it now. Oh well.

And as far as volume 4: I have the basic plot in mind. The "prologue" is written. I have the title for it but I can't reveal it yet. I even have the title of the entire second trilogy, and I will tell you what it is: THE RIVALS. (Or "The Great Rivals" or just "RIVALS.")

A major new character is introduced-- a different kind of character than anything we've seen so far-- who will fill the one big missing spot... a spot that exists if you were to think of the Sentinels as somehow trying to emulate the classic era of the Avengers. La la la....

(Volume 5 will be called "WORLDMIND." Volume 6 is likely to be called "GALACTIC CONFLAGRATION." I think you get the idea of where this is all headed!)

I'm certain that Jameson, the Warlord, and company will be making appearances again at some point, but I really did try to wrap both their stories up as neatly as possible, at least for now... so don't count on them dominating events quite the way they did in the first trilogy!

And finally, I am about to write a short story involving the Sentinels for an online magazine (more info as soon as I have it and can share), which will act as something of a bridge between this trilogy and the next one, and will introduce that new character. That story will also appear in the WIDESCREEN book, I think.

Thanks again for reading and for your great comments!

Hey, everyone else-- get a copy and let us know what you think!

[Van Plexico]

Here is what Bobby says about Heavyweight. I probably didn't depict him as quite this powerful, but it's good to know for future reference:

He's not Graviton in power, but then he can control both gravity
and his own density (that part's almost a self-defense). He could
catapult people pretty high into the air with his power, but not send
them into space.... high enough though that a lot of people would
still be in real trouble.

I've never thought about how powerful he is over all though. He could
pull an airplane at it's taxiing altitude out of the sky (the plane
would probably shatter in the air). His power is localized though,
the gravity well he creates doesn't extend from the ground all the way
to the sky for instance and he doesn't magnify the earth's gravity in
anyway. He just creates a localized increase of gravitational pull on
his target(s) - he saturates them with gravitons (to use
pseudoscience). It's not an easy power to control, and it can get out
of hand very quickly, one second the guy is so heavy he can't walk,
the next he's a puddle of goo, so he doesn't push it to its limits.

Raw power? Wonder Man maybe? He could stand in a fight against Wondy
with his density control. He couldn't lift as much, but his fists
would be so dense as to hit like small mountains.

[Shiryu]

Thanks for the reply

I see what you mean on the purpose behind the Field General's team, and it certainly worked out very well for Fury and Wendy. The others did not strike quite as much, mainly for lack of space, but I suppose this is how you wanted it to be, to avoid having too many characters later on in the series (in this book we already went from 4 to 7 Sentinels).

The point on HW's powers is interesting, and very Vision like. In a way this makes him similar to Vanadium though, a grain of caution may be necessary if he is to show the increase density thing in the next book.

[Van Plexico]

Ron Fortier has just reviewed the third SENTINELS volume at his site. Wow, I think he sort of liked it.

Lots of good "pull quotes" to choose from...

www.pulpfictionreviews.blogspot.com/

[sharkar]

That's a fantastic review, Van!

Even the minor so-called "flaw" is really a compliment...you are creating a world, a body of events. (I remember one of the things I liked best about Marvel was that it was clear things had happened to the characters, as opposed to the simplistic DC "once and done" stories. The reader had to do some work to get the full impact, but it was sure worth it!)

Marvelous review!

[Van Plexico]

Thanks, sharkar!

While I'd love for the Sentinels world to be worthy of being compared in any way to the Marvel Universe (at least in a good way!), I also think of the "Master & Commander" books of Patrick O'Brian as I'm writing them. I would love for this to be a series that extends as far as his did-- his got to 20 books.

And if you pick up one of them, the story is ongoing-- stuff happened in the previous books and carries over. That's just the nature of a series. So they share that same "flaw" these books do: It's a continuing story.

[Van Plexico]

Adrian has a review of this book posted on the SoftPixels site, in which he raises some interesting points:

softpixels.net/v2/archives/sentinels-vol3-apocalypse-rising

I'm curious to hear what others who've read it think. (Of course, I'm also anxious for those who haven't read the book to read it!)

[Shiryu]

It's an interesting review, I had already though about some of the points he makes, but not about others. I didn't notice the lack of innocent bystanders -- and it didn't bother me. In fact, it would have shifted the focus if every 5 minutes someone had to save a 10 years old or something like that. I agree it's not realistic, but it's a novel, not a news report ;D

Same for the lack of army, I suppose they thought that if the planet's strongest superheroes couldn't stop the robots, the army would have been useless. Still, in real world they probably would have sent it, but then again, I don't think we are told that there aren't soldiers fighting somewhere else. After all the heroes are at the center of the scene because were first to arrive, who knows what's happening a few miles away ^^

I agree more with the lack of tension and the difficulties in following everything if you haven't read the previous book (perhaps I even pointed it out in my first review). IMO it's not the casual chatting between heroes that makes the tension waver, but the fact that the enemies are all the same, so you get rid of one and fight another, and so on forever. They don't employ any special tactics, and there aren't some of them with special weapons, or anything that makes one stand out from the others. Most of all, they don't speak much, so while they would work grate visually, it's a bit harder in a book where you occasionally need something to "wake up" your attention again. Some kind of blatant general guiding them would have probably added something.
Oh well ^^

[Van Plexico]

but the fact that the enemies are all the same, so you get rid of one and fight another, and so on forever. They don't employ any special tactics, and there aren't some of them with special weapons, or anything that makes one stand out from the others. Most of all, they don't speak much,

Shiryu-- in the above quote, I'm assuming you are referring only to the Xorex robots, right?

Because the Warlords talk quite a bit... the Field Marshal talks quite a bit... the leader of the Elites and some of the Kur-Bai talk quite a bit... and they all have different schemes and plans going on.

When I first read your comment, I was puzzled, because I thought you were saying that all of the enemies in the book are the same and don't speak much-- which is not remotely true. So-- to clarify-- you are only referring to the Xorex robots, not to all the villains, right??

If so, that makes perfect sense to me. They're all clones of each other and they can't really talk, so that would explain why they'd all have the same scheme going on, and wouldn't talk much!

[Shiryu]

Of course!
Yes, I'm only referring to the Xorex, which are the ones the article most focuses on (or at least I assume they are the giant robots that Adrian mentions, otherwise I've missed something ^^). My comment doesn't apply at all to the Warlord or the other enemies, or the battles against them. They all have very distinctive, and interesting, personalities, which I enjoyed as mentioned in previous comments.

I also see your point about the Xorex, they are basically as they are meant to be, but I suppose that their lack of speaking affects the tension in the fight a bit. As the Thing says when battling Black Bolt for the first time, it's strange fighting someone who doesn't talk back