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Philip José Farmer's The Dungeon #1-2
The Dungeon
The return of a classic "shared world" fantasy series created by Philip Jose Farmer, award-winning author of the "Riverworld" saga Plunging into a vast prison that spans a planet, Clive Foliott faces a fantastic world of dwarves, cyborgs, and aliens unlike anything he has ever imagined. It is a multi-leveled collection of beings from the hidden folds of time and space. Trapped somewhere inside is Neville Foliott, Clive's twin brother, and no creature in the Dungeon will stop Clive from finding him...
- GenresFantasy
608 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2003
2 people are currently reading
81 people want to read
About the author
Richard A. Lupoff
221 books39 followersRichard Allen "Dick" Lupoff (born February 21, 1935 in Brooklyn, New York) is an American science fiction and mystery author, who has also written humor, satire, non-fiction and reviews. In addition to his two dozen novels and more than 40 short stories, he has also edited science-fantasy anthologies. He is an expert on the writing of Edgar Rice Burroughs and has an equally strong interest in H. P. Lovecraft. Before becoming a full-time writer in 1970 he worked in the computer industry.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 26, 2012
Sometime in the mid 1980's, Philip Jose Farmer came up with the concept of The Dungeon, a six part saga of Clive Folliot searching bizarre worlds for his missing brother, and turned other writers loose on it.
The Black Tower: Major Clive Folliot leaves his post in the army and his lover behind in order to go to equatorial Africa to search for his missing brother Neville. Along the way, he runs afoul of shady gamblers, meets an old friend of his, Horace Hamilton Smythe, and a new friend, Sidi Bombay.
However, once Clive gets to Africa, he finds his journey has just begun when he is plunged into another world, The Dungeon, and has to contend with its mysterious inhabitants while searching for his missing brother...
The concept of The Dungeon is remniscent of both Riverworld and the World of Tiers, two PJF favorites. People are plucked from various worlds and time periods and whisked to the worlds of the Dungeon to take part in some kind of cosmic chess game. The worlds are odd and straight out of PJF. I'm sure Richard A. Lupoff knew what Farmer had in mind when he conceived the Dungeon and tried to stay close to the blueprint.
I've never heard of Richard A. Lupoff before this undertaking. His prose is okay. Nothing to shout about but most of PJF's is the same way.
The characters are fairly well done. I know both Smythe and Bombay are still hiding things. Folliot isn't as skilled as most PJF heroes but the devotion to his brother keeps him going. Finnbogg, the humanoid bulldog, is an endearing sort. I hope nothing ghastly happens to him before series end. I have to say I wasn't surprised by User Annie's true identity. It seemed obvious.
The Dark Abyss: The Dark Abyss starts minutes after the conclusion of The Black Tower. Clive and friends flee the Black Tower and travel to more layers of the Dungeon, still on the trail of Clive's brother and the missing Sidi Bombay. Along the way, Clive earns the nickname Serpent Slayer and a strange relationship developes between he and Shriek.
The Dark Abyss was better written than the Black Tower and more exciting. Clive and company continuously go from one peril to the next. The layers explored in the Dark Abyss were more exotic than those in the previous volume. My two favorite parts of this volume involve Shriek, the humanoid spider woman. The image of the assembled party climbing down Shriek's spider silk rope toward the ocean below was spectacular. The best/weirdest part was the strange telepathic love blossoming between Clive and Shriek. Though I was initially disgusted, part of me was hoping those two would hook up.
The only complaint I had was that Annie's dialogue was nothing like it was in the first book.
The Black Tower: Major Clive Folliot leaves his post in the army and his lover behind in order to go to equatorial Africa to search for his missing brother Neville. Along the way, he runs afoul of shady gamblers, meets an old friend of his, Horace Hamilton Smythe, and a new friend, Sidi Bombay.
However, once Clive gets to Africa, he finds his journey has just begun when he is plunged into another world, The Dungeon, and has to contend with its mysterious inhabitants while searching for his missing brother...
The concept of The Dungeon is remniscent of both Riverworld and the World of Tiers, two PJF favorites. People are plucked from various worlds and time periods and whisked to the worlds of the Dungeon to take part in some kind of cosmic chess game. The worlds are odd and straight out of PJF. I'm sure Richard A. Lupoff knew what Farmer had in mind when he conceived the Dungeon and tried to stay close to the blueprint.
I've never heard of Richard A. Lupoff before this undertaking. His prose is okay. Nothing to shout about but most of PJF's is the same way.
The characters are fairly well done. I know both Smythe and Bombay are still hiding things. Folliot isn't as skilled as most PJF heroes but the devotion to his brother keeps him going. Finnbogg, the humanoid bulldog, is an endearing sort. I hope nothing ghastly happens to him before series end. I have to say I wasn't surprised by User Annie's true identity. It seemed obvious.
The Dark Abyss: The Dark Abyss starts minutes after the conclusion of The Black Tower. Clive and friends flee the Black Tower and travel to more layers of the Dungeon, still on the trail of Clive's brother and the missing Sidi Bombay. Along the way, Clive earns the nickname Serpent Slayer and a strange relationship developes between he and Shriek.
The Dark Abyss was better written than the Black Tower and more exciting. Clive and company continuously go from one peril to the next. The layers explored in the Dark Abyss were more exotic than those in the previous volume. My two favorite parts of this volume involve Shriek, the humanoid spider woman. The image of the assembled party climbing down Shriek's spider silk rope toward the ocean below was spectacular. The best/weirdest part was the strange telepathic love blossoming between Clive and Shriek. Though I was initially disgusted, part of me was hoping those two would hook up.
The only complaint I had was that Annie's dialogue was nothing like it was in the first book.
July 26, 2016
(reviewing an edition which only had the first two books in it)
The first two books of the series; I've read the first and a small chunk of the second before giving up entirely.
The story is iffy at best. The characters are one-dimentional to the point of absurdity. The writing is extremely friendly to dyslexics, people with the attention span of under 2 ms, and the like, but for my 3ms attention span it's too much. Here's a sample:
(note for comparison: the book is formatted so that each line is about 48 characters long. the following is the compressed text of the end of page 120 to page 122 of the first book - just barely more than 2 pages)
(also note, there is exactly one firearm ever mentioned in the entire book, and it's an excrutiatingly described revolver belonging to Sgt Horace Hamilton Smythe. Excrutiating both due to the detail and due to the frequency of that detailed description, which is once every handful of pages)
"If he lost his grip, there would be no help from Sidi Bombay or Horace Hamilton Smythe"
... [two lines later]
"Another fifteen or twenty yards up, Clive saw Horace Hamilton Smythe."
... [8 more lines]
"... peering upward at Horace Hamilton Smythe. ..." (about 2 lines down, Horace tosses his pistol to Clive)
[for the next 22 lines, the pistol falls]
[16 more lines of the trigger actually being squeezed]
[11 lines of describing the target, as seen in the muzzle flash, but this is actually justified since we haven't read THIS description yet]
"And then, as thatr fleeting flash of light faded, the bullet fired from Horace Hamilton Smythe's American revolver struck ..." [and so on and so forth]
[13 more lines]
"He braced Sidi Bombay's staff against the walls of the fissure, stuck Horace Hamilton Smythe's revolver into his waistband, ..."
Thus, I would only recommend reading it if you have nothing to do on an elevator - open the book on any page and you're sure not to be missing any relevant info.
Additionally, the actual book has obviously been made from publisher discards, so the first book ends at page 339, has several pages of sketches, then there are some roman-numeraled pages of introduction to the second book and then we have page 1 again, which makes navigation annoying. This was all good and fine on hand-typed russian bootlegs in the days when unapproved books were forbidden, but this is just silly.
The first two books of the series; I've read the first and a small chunk of the second before giving up entirely.
The story is iffy at best. The characters are one-dimentional to the point of absurdity. The writing is extremely friendly to dyslexics, people with the attention span of under 2 ms, and the like, but for my 3ms attention span it's too much. Here's a sample:
(note for comparison: the book is formatted so that each line is about 48 characters long. the following is the compressed text of the end of page 120 to page 122 of the first book - just barely more than 2 pages)
(also note, there is exactly one firearm ever mentioned in the entire book, and it's an excrutiatingly described revolver belonging to Sgt Horace Hamilton Smythe. Excrutiating both due to the detail and due to the frequency of that detailed description, which is once every handful of pages)
"If he lost his grip, there would be no help from Sidi Bombay or Horace Hamilton Smythe"
... [two lines later]
"Another fifteen or twenty yards up, Clive saw Horace Hamilton Smythe."
... [8 more lines]
"... peering upward at Horace Hamilton Smythe. ..." (about 2 lines down, Horace tosses his pistol to Clive)
[for the next 22 lines, the pistol falls]
[16 more lines of the trigger actually being squeezed]
[11 lines of describing the target, as seen in the muzzle flash, but this is actually justified since we haven't read THIS description yet]
"And then, as thatr fleeting flash of light faded, the bullet fired from Horace Hamilton Smythe's American revolver struck ..." [and so on and so forth]
[13 more lines]
"He braced Sidi Bombay's staff against the walls of the fissure, stuck Horace Hamilton Smythe's revolver into his waistband, ..."
Thus, I would only recommend reading it if you have nothing to do on an elevator - open the book on any page and you're sure not to be missing any relevant info.
Additionally, the actual book has obviously been made from publisher discards, so the first book ends at page 339, has several pages of sketches, then there are some roman-numeraled pages of introduction to the second book and then we have page 1 again, which makes navigation annoying. This was all good and fine on hand-typed russian bootlegs in the days when unapproved books were forbidden, but this is just silly.
December 27, 2015
I have read this book a long time ago (10 years or more) but remember absolutely nothing about it, so it must have been pretty unremarkable (therefore the 2-stars rating).
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews