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Ned the Seal #2
Flaming London
Ned Lives!
That's right. Ned the Seal of Zeppelins West survived the shark attack from his last adventure, and he's back in a new escapade starring Jules Verne, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells and his Martian invaders, as well as a number of surprise guests you may or may not recognize.
Yes, my friends, it's a story of Ned the Seal, adventurer, future dime novelist and fish lover, in a world not of his making. Not of his choice. In fact, no one knows for sure who made it or chose it. And boy is it a mess.
Besides our plucky seal, here too is Rikwalk, the forty foot tall ape. Beadle and John Feather, the Masters of the giant metal steam man of the prairie, stoked up and ready to fight Martian war machines.
Not since you stubbed your big toe on your way to the toilet in the middle of the night have there been so many surprises. Flaming London is a pure fun romp you can ride without benefit of bridle or saddle and it won't hurt your toe.
So kick back, turn on the fan, pull the covers up to your chin, prop up your back, and read this tale of seals unchained, Steam unharnessed, ruthless Martian invaders, and heroes.
And don't forget the fish.
That's right. Ned the Seal of Zeppelins West survived the shark attack from his last adventure, and he's back in a new escapade starring Jules Verne, Mark Twain, H. G. Wells and his Martian invaders, as well as a number of surprise guests you may or may not recognize.
Yes, my friends, it's a story of Ned the Seal, adventurer, future dime novelist and fish lover, in a world not of his making. Not of his choice. In fact, no one knows for sure who made it or chose it. And boy is it a mess.
Besides our plucky seal, here too is Rikwalk, the forty foot tall ape. Beadle and John Feather, the Masters of the giant metal steam man of the prairie, stoked up and ready to fight Martian war machines.
Not since you stubbed your big toe on your way to the toilet in the middle of the night have there been so many surprises. Flaming London is a pure fun romp you can ride without benefit of bridle or saddle and it won't hurt your toe.
So kick back, turn on the fan, pull the covers up to your chin, prop up your back, and read this tale of seals unchained, Steam unharnessed, ruthless Martian invaders, and heroes.
And don't forget the fish.
177 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
2 people are currently reading
301 people want to read
About the author
Joe R. Lansdale
818 books3,893 followersChampion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television.
He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.
He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.
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August 22, 2018This trade hardcover is signed by Joe R. Lansdale.
July 26, 2011
I honestly don't know what to make of this book. It was like a bad literary acid trip gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong. I mean, don't get me wrong here, I like it when folks write outside the box, but this was such a meandering mish-mash of different things that made you go, "HUH?" I'd read it if I had (literally) nothing else to do....Otherwise, skip it.
March 25, 2015
Joe R. Lansdale is one of America’s most underrated novelists, probably because he writes in many different genres, never stopping in one place long enough to build a large following. I call this the Whimsical Lansdale genre, and it goes alongside many of his shorter works like Drive-In: The Bus Tour and “Dread Island”. This is a lighthearted "mash-up" ode to all the classic pulp adventure and science fiction tales that Lansdale grew up with.
Flaming London is a direct sequel to Zeppelins West, and it continues the adventures of Ned the Seal, this time as he partners with Mark Twain and Jules Verne in a battle against H. G. Wells’ Martian invaders. Steampunk inventions and other imaginative silliness abounds. There are shades-of-Kong talking apes, aliens of all stripes and creeds, dinosaurs, pirates, and Indians. Passepartout from Around the World in 80 Days comes along for the ride, and The Land That Time Forgot gets remembered.
This is also a de facto sequel to Lansdale’s 1999 novella “The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down”. Several characters and conflicts reappear. Readers who have not read “Steam Man” may feel the backstory provided here seems choppy and rushed.
Like its predecessors this novel is brimming with imagination and humor. Flaming London has more narrative thrust and feels less like it was made up on the fly. However, it suffers from being a middle chapter with no true beginning and end. One day, there is supposed to be a concluding volume called The Sky Done Ripped, for which Lansdale fans have been waiting 10 years. The third volume promises to be the best, as least if you like time-travel, as our surviving heroes are left in a position to begin utilizing the technology from H.G. Well’s famous novel The Time Machine to repair a fractured space-time continuum.
Flaming London is a direct sequel to Zeppelins West, and it continues the adventures of Ned the Seal, this time as he partners with Mark Twain and Jules Verne in a battle against H. G. Wells’ Martian invaders. Steampunk inventions and other imaginative silliness abounds. There are shades-of-Kong talking apes, aliens of all stripes and creeds, dinosaurs, pirates, and Indians. Passepartout from Around the World in 80 Days comes along for the ride, and The Land That Time Forgot gets remembered.
This is also a de facto sequel to Lansdale’s 1999 novella “The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down”. Several characters and conflicts reappear. Readers who have not read “Steam Man” may feel the backstory provided here seems choppy and rushed.
Like its predecessors this novel is brimming with imagination and humor. Flaming London has more narrative thrust and feels less like it was made up on the fly. However, it suffers from being a middle chapter with no true beginning and end. One day, there is supposed to be a concluding volume called The Sky Done Ripped, for which Lansdale fans have been waiting 10 years. The third volume promises to be the best, as least if you like time-travel, as our surviving heroes are left in a position to begin utilizing the technology from H.G. Well’s famous novel The Time Machine to repair a fractured space-time continuum.
January 31, 2011
Excellent! Almost as good as Zeppelins West. Recommended to those who don't mind graphic violence and seal sex scenes.
October 27, 2021
That’s right, there’s a sequel. This is quite impressive considering everyone died at the end of the last book. Though it seems not everyone died. This includes two characters who I was fairly certain had died but after going back and checking the last few pages of the previous book had in fact survived. Though they had done so in such a boring anticlimactic way that I wonder if I was actually reading a second edition with an additional paragraph awkwardly shoved in. Though I would say they aren’t used enough to warrant that and the rest of the book is so random that I doubt Joe really went out of his way to bring them back.
Anyone one character we do learn has survived the end of the last book is Ned the seal which I think makes sense since they all sank into the ocean at the end of the last adventure. He washes up at the start of this one, somewhere near Italy, to be found by Mark Twain whose something of a depressed alcoholic. He takes him to meet his good friend Jules Verne and they are marvelling over a seal that can read and write* when the Martians decide to invade. Unsure what else to do they set off to find H.G Wells assuming he may be able to help. Along the way they encounter the Land that Time Forgot, a Martian super ape, the Flying Dutchman, and half a dozen literary references that I won’t go into. There doesn’t seem to be any such aversion to name them outright this time so they may be a little easier to spot.
Now I quite liked the last book. It was good, cheap, simple, fun from a very clever mind taking some time off to enjoy itself. This book is more of the same. Maybe that’s why I didn’t appreciate it as much. Now I couldn’t say, for certain, if that is because Joe fails to capture that lightning in a bottle or if the joke that sparkled so well after one hundred and fifty pages, is just starting to get a bit old by the three hundred mark. Something like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mixes all of these literary references into a fresh new story impacted by the new players on the scene in each instalment. Here is much the same though it means we have to make a segue into seal sex for a few pages and there seems to be much more of the dick and bum jokes than before. I don’t know if they are trying to out do the last book but that felt to me like it was already jutting up against the ceiling of taste. This one smashes through that and thus lets the rain in leaving you with a damp little tale.
I feel this book has more direction than the last. After all in that one Dracula washed ashore to do nothing more than get eaten. Perhaps it’s trying to take a naturally meandering, pointless, exercise and turn it into a true tale it’s lost it’s way. This can be seen when Joe brings two characters from another book of his into this one. Making all the different Victorian dime store novels work together is hard enough but it appears, from what I can see here, that Joe’s other book is as bat shit as this one meaning you end up with a lot of exposition that you still don’t really follow only now you don’t care.
I’m not saying I hated this book but it did feel an awful lot like bumping into that guy from high school who told the best jokes at the time only to find out that he’s still telling them.
*Certainly better than I can.
See more reviews at https://kibbinscodex.wordpress.com/
Anyone one character we do learn has survived the end of the last book is Ned the seal which I think makes sense since they all sank into the ocean at the end of the last adventure. He washes up at the start of this one, somewhere near Italy, to be found by Mark Twain whose something of a depressed alcoholic. He takes him to meet his good friend Jules Verne and they are marvelling over a seal that can read and write* when the Martians decide to invade. Unsure what else to do they set off to find H.G Wells assuming he may be able to help. Along the way they encounter the Land that Time Forgot, a Martian super ape, the Flying Dutchman, and half a dozen literary references that I won’t go into. There doesn’t seem to be any such aversion to name them outright this time so they may be a little easier to spot.
Now I quite liked the last book. It was good, cheap, simple, fun from a very clever mind taking some time off to enjoy itself. This book is more of the same. Maybe that’s why I didn’t appreciate it as much. Now I couldn’t say, for certain, if that is because Joe fails to capture that lightning in a bottle or if the joke that sparkled so well after one hundred and fifty pages, is just starting to get a bit old by the three hundred mark. Something like League of Extraordinary Gentlemen mixes all of these literary references into a fresh new story impacted by the new players on the scene in each instalment. Here is much the same though it means we have to make a segue into seal sex for a few pages and there seems to be much more of the dick and bum jokes than before. I don’t know if they are trying to out do the last book but that felt to me like it was already jutting up against the ceiling of taste. This one smashes through that and thus lets the rain in leaving you with a damp little tale.
I feel this book has more direction than the last. After all in that one Dracula washed ashore to do nothing more than get eaten. Perhaps it’s trying to take a naturally meandering, pointless, exercise and turn it into a true tale it’s lost it’s way. This can be seen when Joe brings two characters from another book of his into this one. Making all the different Victorian dime store novels work together is hard enough but it appears, from what I can see here, that Joe’s other book is as bat shit as this one meaning you end up with a lot of exposition that you still don’t really follow only now you don’t care.
I’m not saying I hated this book but it did feel an awful lot like bumping into that guy from high school who told the best jokes at the time only to find out that he’s still telling them.
*Certainly better than I can.
See more reviews at https://kibbinscodex.wordpress.com/
June 27, 2017
This was fun. I really enjoyed it. Give it a go.
August 8, 2020
Sillier than a bum full of smarties
March 7, 2017
Odd, creative, and very entertaining. Ned the Seal is funny and you can't help but to root for him. This copy is an attractive signed limited edition.
September 4, 2013
Londra tra le fiamme è il più orribile, raffazzonato, imbarazzante, confusionario, pasticciato, stupido, insensato e noioso romanzo di Lansdale.
Una sarabanda di personaggi, e uno spunto narrativo di fondo, da cui sarebbe logico attendersi non certo il Grande Romanzo Americano, ma almeno una storiella spumeggiante, coinvolgente e divertente quali Lansdale non sarebbe certo nuovo a scrivere. Invece incredibilmente la cifra che più di tutte caratterizza la storia è la noia. Una noia resa ancora più inverosimile dalla propria capacità di annullare del tutto gli effetti di un vortice di eventi che non conosce praticamente mai sosta. Perché in fondo il problema è proprio questo. L’intera struttura di Londra tra le fiamme sta in piedi esclusivamente grazie all’ininterrotto susseguirsi degli episodi. Continuano a succedere cose, di ogni genere, sempre più rutilanti, colossali ed esplosive. Il fatto è che a tenere insieme episodi e scene non c’è il barlume di un’idea una da parte dell’autore. Quello che vorrebbe essere, nelle intenzioni di Lansdale, un omaggio lisergico alle dime novels (più di una volta esplicitamente richiamati da Ned la foca nel suo diario) si riduce così a un baraccone stordente di trovate pacchiane che franano senza controllo l’una sull’altra e umorismo crasso che sembra tratto di peso dal Vernacoliere, con quegli ossessivi ammiccamenti a sesso, cazzo, culo e scorregge.
Un romanzo che, come avviene nella storia che racconta, sembra scritto proprio da una foca.
Una sarabanda di personaggi, e uno spunto narrativo di fondo, da cui sarebbe logico attendersi non certo il Grande Romanzo Americano, ma almeno una storiella spumeggiante, coinvolgente e divertente quali Lansdale non sarebbe certo nuovo a scrivere. Invece incredibilmente la cifra che più di tutte caratterizza la storia è la noia. Una noia resa ancora più inverosimile dalla propria capacità di annullare del tutto gli effetti di un vortice di eventi che non conosce praticamente mai sosta. Perché in fondo il problema è proprio questo. L’intera struttura di Londra tra le fiamme sta in piedi esclusivamente grazie all’ininterrotto susseguirsi degli episodi. Continuano a succedere cose, di ogni genere, sempre più rutilanti, colossali ed esplosive. Il fatto è che a tenere insieme episodi e scene non c’è il barlume di un’idea una da parte dell’autore. Quello che vorrebbe essere, nelle intenzioni di Lansdale, un omaggio lisergico alle dime novels (più di una volta esplicitamente richiamati da Ned la foca nel suo diario) si riduce così a un baraccone stordente di trovate pacchiane che franano senza controllo l’una sull’altra e umorismo crasso che sembra tratto di peso dal Vernacoliere, con quegli ossessivi ammiccamenti a sesso, cazzo, culo e scorregge.
Un romanzo che, come avviene nella storia che racconta, sembra scritto proprio da una foca.
May 24, 2012
Difficile riassumere in poche parole Londra tra le fiamme. In poco più di 180 pagine ci sono: scrittori famosi, foche parlanti a cui piace tanto il pesce, marziani, voli in mongolfiera, naufragi, pirati, personaggi del libro precedente, pterodattili, marziani di una dimensione parallela, robot di stagno alti dodici metri (ma che guadagnano altri tre metri con il cappello), sesso tra foche, viaggi in mare, battaglie interplanetarie e viaggi nel tempo. Insomma, un gran casino.
Divertente è divertente, non lo metto in dubbio. E Lansdale è sempre un maestro della scrittura, in qualsiasi genere si cimenti.
Purtroppo però Londra tra le fiamme non è Fuoco nella polvere. Il primo, infatti, era un giusto bilanciamento tra genio e follia, questo romanzo, invece, pende decisamente dalla parte della follia.
In ogni caso, ormai le avventure di Ned la Foca mi hanno appassionato. E aspetto con ansia l'uscita di The Sky Done Ripped, terzo e probabilmente ultimo volume della saga, annunciato ma ancora inedito.
Divertente è divertente, non lo metto in dubbio. E Lansdale è sempre un maestro della scrittura, in qualsiasi genere si cimenti.
Purtroppo però Londra tra le fiamme non è Fuoco nella polvere. Il primo, infatti, era un giusto bilanciamento tra genio e follia, questo romanzo, invece, pende decisamente dalla parte della follia.
In ogni caso, ormai le avventure di Ned la Foca mi hanno appassionato. E aspetto con ansia l'uscita di The Sky Done Ripped, terzo e probabilmente ultimo volume della saga, annunciato ma ancora inedito.
March 22, 2014
Seguito di "Fuoco nella polvere" questa strampalata storia viene narrata in parte da Ned, la foca scrivente. In questo libro appaiono Mark Twain, Jules Verne e H.G. Welles, più una scimmia che assomiglia vagamente a King Kong e i marziani della guerra dei mondi, anche qui il tutto è abbastanza folle e sembra non concludersi neanche stavolta, quando i nostri eroi decidono di mettersi sulle orme del "cavaliere oscuro" [che potrebbe, come non potrebbe essere Batman] e colmare tutti i buchi spazio/temporali che lui e i suoi Morlock si sono lasciati alle spalle.
Storia lisergica da gustarsi con ketamina.
Storia lisergica da gustarsi con ketamina.
March 11, 2010
This is such a "guy" book... My first impression was "Oops, this is not for me!" but it was a fairly slim book and figured I'd press on and just stick it out through all the fart and ass references. Actually toward the end I was reading passages out loud to my son and husband because they were so damn funny and my guys definitely appreciate the humour! Maybe Lansdale isn't for me, or maybe just this Lansdale isn't for me but it did get quite a few laughs out of me so it wasn't a complete waste of my time.
May 22, 2013
Non avrei mai pensato di dirlo, ma questa volta Joe ha esagerato. Fuoco nella polvere era già il prototipo perfetto del dime-novel, non ho capito la necessità di calcare ulteriormente la mano. Tanto più che la storia e i personaggi questa volta sono anche meno interessanti (Ned escluso, ovviamente). Una stella per la storia, una di bonus perché leggere Lansdale è come farsi un giro su un ottovolante.
September 23, 2015
I have to say that was a fun story. Although meant to be a continuation of Zeppelins West, I enjoyed this one more. Don't get me wrong - with Jules Verne and Mark Twain traveling with Ned The Seal to save a burning London from terrorizing Martian invaders it was plenty weird. But the story had a little more direction I guess.
March 26, 2008
Fucking brilliant fun quick light reading. If you enjoy dick, fart, and seal jokes as much as I do you'll love this here book. I love that the man who wrote "the Bottoms" (which if you haven't read I highly recommend) wrote this piece of insanity. Excellent author, excellent book.
July 27, 2010
Lansdale is as profane/insane as ever. The shine is slightly off here, as it largely recycles/remixes most of the techiniques of Zeppelins West without adding much that's really new, but it was still tremendously fun to read.
December 25, 2013
Read this while on Vicodin. (Dental work.) That added a whole 'nother dimension to it. A must read for Mark Twain fans and people who like fezzes. :)
October 22, 2016
Fun. Wish I could read the rest of the series.
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August 22, 2008Flaming London by Joe R. Lansdale (2006)
July 19, 2010
The best steampunk dime novel I've read that was written by a seal.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews