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3.55 AVERAGE
3.55 AVERAGE
Unlike the reviewer at SF Site, I felt that the best of the bunch was the story that didn't include Holmes -- the incomparable Kim Newman's 'The Red Planet League'. The rest were readable, at times even quite good -- with the possible exception of editor J.R. Campbell's awkward pulp offering 'The Entwined' -- and I always enjoy encounters between Holmes and the 'fantastic' but really -- fandom does a much better job with this sort of thing. Three stars, if only because I can read any Holmes pastiche with a certain degree of pleasure.
A collection of largely successful pastiches, only one outright miss in the bunch (Lost World crossover w/Professor Challenger - garbage). A lot of efforts like these end up trying too hard, when often it seems like Conan Doyle dashed out a lot of the canon without trying at all. I did enjoy the last story that was absent Holmes & Watson entirely, featuring Moran & Moriarty in a ridiculous bit of fun that made me wish for a Breaking Bad style incarnation of that duo.
Nice to have the short story options, some I enjoyed more than others. An interesting variety overall.
I have to admit that this book almost completely lost me in the first tale that involves Holes and Peter Pan. I held on though and the short stories did improve overall. Definitely not my favorite collection though.
More fun Sherlock Holmes - horror style! From vampires to djinns to I-don't-even-WANT-to-know-what, I enjoyed this set of fan fiction, written by those with a clear love for both the tempermental detective and the horror/sci-fi/fantasty genre. The first story in particular is a standout for me.
I'm not much for short story collections but this one was fun and had a lot more hits than misses. The stories are essentially "supernatural Sherlock Holmes" stories and they are all fun in one way or another.
This is an absolutely wonderful collection that I felt kept the spirit of the Strand publications, complete with illustrations for each story. The stories were hit or miss, but honestly, this book was just good plain fun.
I shamelessly adore fanfiction. I've loved it ever since I was about 10 and discovered Star Trek novels in Half Priced Books. I can never let characters go completely - I always want more and I want it from other fans who understand. So I was understandably delighted to see Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite TOS writers, as the author of the first story. Holmes, a former Lost Boy? Taking the case to find the missing Darling children? Fighting a mysterious eldritch creature with Peter Pan? Shut up, I'll take it.
I read all of the Sherlock Holmes canon a few years ago and Doyle would sometimes tease the reader with the potential for a supernatural solution, but always kept Holmes firmly in "our" reality - no ghosts or vampires in those stories. But it's a pleasure to see him scoffingly investigate ghostly apparitions with William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, reluctantly join forces with H. Heron and E. Heron's psychic detective, Flaxman Low, and even, in his old age, nonchalantly fight vampires with a hardboiled gumshoe in LA. In the weakest of the stories, he takes it upon himself to track down Doyle's own dinosaur-hunting Professor Challenger. There's even a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by Raffles, the "gentleman thief."
Okay, so this is probably not great literature. But who cares? This was a fantastic weird collection. The final two stories, Red Sunset (the hardboiled gumshoe story) and The Red Planet League (a ridiculously depraved Moran describing Professor Moriarty's convoluted revenge against an academic rival) had me giggling hysterically. I still don't know what made me request this volume from the library, but I'm glad to have it. This was a pleasure to read.
I shamelessly adore fanfiction. I've loved it ever since I was about 10 and discovered Star Trek novels in Half Priced Books. I can never let characters go completely - I always want more and I want it from other fans who understand. So I was understandably delighted to see Barbara Hambly, one of my favorite TOS writers, as the author of the first story. Holmes, a former Lost Boy? Taking the case to find the missing Darling children? Fighting a mysterious eldritch creature with Peter Pan? Shut up, I'll take it.
I read all of the Sherlock Holmes canon a few years ago and Doyle would sometimes tease the reader with the potential for a supernatural solution, but always kept Holmes firmly in "our" reality - no ghosts or vampires in those stories. But it's a pleasure to see him scoffingly investigate ghostly apparitions with William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki the Ghost-Finder, reluctantly join forces with H. Heron and E. Heron's psychic detective, Flaxman Low, and even, in his old age, nonchalantly fight vampires with a hardboiled gumshoe in LA. In the weakest of the stories, he takes it upon himself to track down Doyle's own dinosaur-hunting Professor Challenger. There's even a blink-and-you-miss-it cameo by Raffles, the "gentleman thief."
Okay, so this is probably not great literature. But who cares? This was a fantastic weird collection. The final two stories, Red Sunset (the hardboiled gumshoe story) and The Red Planet League (a ridiculously depraved Moran describing Professor Moriarty's convoluted revenge against an academic rival) had me giggling hysterically. I still don't know what made me request this volume from the library, but I'm glad to have it. This was a pleasure to read.
I thought this would be a fun book with a bunch of Sherlock Holmes short stories but I brought it back to the library after reading the first one. I mean really, Sherlock Holmes helping out Peter Pan. PLEASE!
Well-written fan fiction it is, but it's still, essentially fan fiction, and, no offense, to Sherlock Holmes fans, but as much as I love the original stories, I'm not convinced that there's enough complexity to the Holmseian world support this type of effort -- or perhaps these just aren't the right stories to convince me of that (it probably doesn't help that I read this while in the middle of reading a massive Jack Vance festschrif which is totally awesome).
That said, some of these stories are fun. A couple are even quite good. And if you are a major fan of all things Holmes and Watson, you might like this anthology quite a bit.
That said, some of these stories are fun. A couple are even quite good. And if you are a major fan of all things Holmes and Watson, you might like this anthology quite a bit.
I had a really, really hard time reading this book. One or two of the stories were entertaining and one was somewhat creepy but none were really scary or even came close to feeling like a Sherlock Holmes story. There wasn't any story that I felt compelled to read and if I put the book down I had to make myself start to read it again and this has pretty much cooled my interest in the Sherlock Holmes/horror genre mash up idea.