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.