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Thulsa's Gate
Members of a salvage company get more than they bargained for when they search for a World War II bomber that went down in 1945 during a freak storm over the Teton Mountains in Wyoming and Idaho. Having stumbled through an inter-dimensional portal, they must fight their way back home to their own planet and time before the storm that brought them to the alien world, is gone.
580 pages, Paperback
First published April 24, 2014
1 person is currently reading
11 people want to read
About the author
Robert James Schultz
3 books2 followersRobert is a graduate of Ricks College, now called BYU-Idaho. He currently works for BYU-Idaho AV Productions as the Chief Video Engineer. Robert holds a private pilot’s certificate and works on light general and experimental aircraft avionics at the Rexburg Airport in his spare time. Water sports and riding motorcycles on road trips with his brothers are just some of his many interests. He loves participating in Triathlons and is a 2013 Ironman. Robert has loved writing stories since his early teens, most dealing with the science fiction genre. Married to Lola Hazel VanLeishout, they are the parents of five children and reside in Sugar City, Idaho.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 27, 2015
My brother's always had a vivid imagination and it's nice to see after 50+ years he's finally channeled it somewhere positive. I should also mention up front that I had to pay for my own copy of Thulsa's Gate. Apparently being a close relative doesn't count for as much as it used to.
That said, while I kept hearing his voice in my head while I read most of Thulsa's Gate (which distracted me a little - most reader's won't have the same experience), I was still able to get caught up in this very interesting and imaginative story he's created. I found myself cheering for all the heroes and hating the bad guys.
Thulsa's Gate will never compare to Dickens or Vonnegut. I saw a couple of words that don't currently exist in the English language, and a better editor would have fixed some grammar and spelling errors. Sometimes there was so much Robert in the narrative I wondered if it might not be better told in the first person.
But, it was absolutely a fun, exciting and interesting tale, with varied and real characters. The weave of science, fiction, fantasy, action and human emotion was very well done.
I'll read the next one (even if I have to buy it myself again).
That said, while I kept hearing his voice in my head while I read most of Thulsa's Gate (which distracted me a little - most reader's won't have the same experience), I was still able to get caught up in this very interesting and imaginative story he's created. I found myself cheering for all the heroes and hating the bad guys.
Thulsa's Gate will never compare to Dickens or Vonnegut. I saw a couple of words that don't currently exist in the English language, and a better editor would have fixed some grammar and spelling errors. Sometimes there was so much Robert in the narrative I wondered if it might not be better told in the first person.
But, it was absolutely a fun, exciting and interesting tale, with varied and real characters. The weave of science, fiction, fantasy, action and human emotion was very well done.
I'll read the next one (even if I have to buy it myself again).
November 7, 2014
I read a lot of pulp fiction. From the stories of ClarkAshton Smith to the novels of Andre Norton and Edgar Rice Burroughs. I read them because of their earnestness – Smith’s “The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan,” for example, is a rather straightforward tale of an avaricious money-lender cursed by a beggar whom he cheats; straightforward, that is, until the gems he bought from the beggar for a song take him to his weirding. The last sentence of the story (which I won’t reveal here) lets you know you’re reading Clark Ashton Smith.
That’s what I admire about Robert Shultz’s “Thulsa’s Gate.” The earnestness. Schultz’s story is rooted in a straightforward reality: A modern team the restores vintage aircraft search for a crashed World War II-era bomber in Wyoming’s Teton Range. But then the earnest, pulpy science fiction comes into the story: The plane is the anthropomorphized focus of a swirling storm that acts as a portal to a parallel world, and the straightforward airplane restorers fly right through it.
The premise sets the ensemble up for the classic “can the newcomers survive in a world gone mad” scenario classic to the best pulp fiction. Schultz tells his tale well, bringing in the stock pulp characters – the evil overlord, the comical, yet highly-educated animal species, the damsel in distress who ain’t actually in distress and is actually in charge of the whole mess, and the plucky hero who finds the magical weaponry and who will fight against all odds to see the battles won and the airplane brought back home and restored as it ought to be.
Maybe that description sounds snotty, but it’s not meant to be. Schultz obviously spent a lot of time reading the kinds of books he wants to write, and succeeds mightily in doing so with Thulsa’s Gate. As is sometimes the case with ensemble casts, it’s hard to tell the more minor characters apart, but the main characters are round, whole, and well-developed.
Unlike most pulp novel ladies, however, Shultz’s heroine, Catrina, is no mere beauty to be fought for and won by the men. She’s risen from outsider to ruler in this parallel world and does her fair best to train her hero Brit for the nasty sword battle to come with her ruling rival Ivan. The only time she swoons is when it’s expected – when she feels some connection to the humdrum world she left behind, the world where Brit finds and restores old planes.
Schultz’s strengths lie in his ear for action that’s often combined with a wit that keeps pace with the story. For example:
“Not looking forward to this,” Jocko complained, scampering over several rocks and tree roots.
“Not looking forward to what?” Bryan puffed exhaustedly.
“The swim.”
“Why you can dog paddle, can’t you?”
“What is a dog?” Jocko asked, dodging a couple more arrows. He would see the river now. They were only yards from it.
“Animal from my planet,” Bryan answered, smelling water now. “Four legs, smaller than you, no wings, barks real loud, hates cats.”
“What’s a cat?”
“Animal from my planet,” Bryan said, stumbling through the twist of underbrush and tree roots. “Four legs, smarter than you, no wings, hates dogs, loves mice.”
“What’s a mice?”
“Never mind!” Bryan complained in hushed exasperation. “You’d think Tim would have told you guys about them.”
Good writers tell novices to give their readers moments to breathe as the action unfolds, and Schultz does so often with these funny little asides.
But the story moves. And moves into all the areas you expect good pulp fiction to take you: sword battles, sneaking through army lines, having army lines to sneak through, mystical encounters with spooky rocks and en even spookier plane, bridging the gap between worlds. There's treachery and betrayal. There's a love story. There's enough to keep you hooked to the end.
The book isn’t perfect – Schultz has a love for adverbs and a shyness for simply saying a character “said” something, but overall the writing is several notches up from what you’d expect in a first novel.
That’s what I admire about Robert Shultz’s “Thulsa’s Gate.” The earnestness. Schultz’s story is rooted in a straightforward reality: A modern team the restores vintage aircraft search for a crashed World War II-era bomber in Wyoming’s Teton Range. But then the earnest, pulpy science fiction comes into the story: The plane is the anthropomorphized focus of a swirling storm that acts as a portal to a parallel world, and the straightforward airplane restorers fly right through it.
The premise sets the ensemble up for the classic “can the newcomers survive in a world gone mad” scenario classic to the best pulp fiction. Schultz tells his tale well, bringing in the stock pulp characters – the evil overlord, the comical, yet highly-educated animal species, the damsel in distress who ain’t actually in distress and is actually in charge of the whole mess, and the plucky hero who finds the magical weaponry and who will fight against all odds to see the battles won and the airplane brought back home and restored as it ought to be.
Maybe that description sounds snotty, but it’s not meant to be. Schultz obviously spent a lot of time reading the kinds of books he wants to write, and succeeds mightily in doing so with Thulsa’s Gate. As is sometimes the case with ensemble casts, it’s hard to tell the more minor characters apart, but the main characters are round, whole, and well-developed.
Unlike most pulp novel ladies, however, Shultz’s heroine, Catrina, is no mere beauty to be fought for and won by the men. She’s risen from outsider to ruler in this parallel world and does her fair best to train her hero Brit for the nasty sword battle to come with her ruling rival Ivan. The only time she swoons is when it’s expected – when she feels some connection to the humdrum world she left behind, the world where Brit finds and restores old planes.
Schultz’s strengths lie in his ear for action that’s often combined with a wit that keeps pace with the story. For example:
“Not looking forward to this,” Jocko complained, scampering over several rocks and tree roots.
“Not looking forward to what?” Bryan puffed exhaustedly.
“The swim.”
“Why you can dog paddle, can’t you?”
“What is a dog?” Jocko asked, dodging a couple more arrows. He would see the river now. They were only yards from it.
“Animal from my planet,” Bryan answered, smelling water now. “Four legs, smaller than you, no wings, barks real loud, hates cats.”
“What’s a cat?”
“Animal from my planet,” Bryan said, stumbling through the twist of underbrush and tree roots. “Four legs, smarter than you, no wings, hates dogs, loves mice.”
“What’s a mice?”
“Never mind!” Bryan complained in hushed exasperation. “You’d think Tim would have told you guys about them.”
Good writers tell novices to give their readers moments to breathe as the action unfolds, and Schultz does so often with these funny little asides.
But the story moves. And moves into all the areas you expect good pulp fiction to take you: sword battles, sneaking through army lines, having army lines to sneak through, mystical encounters with spooky rocks and en even spookier plane, bridging the gap between worlds. There's treachery and betrayal. There's a love story. There's enough to keep you hooked to the end.
The book isn’t perfect – Schultz has a love for adverbs and a shyness for simply saying a character “said” something, but overall the writing is several notches up from what you’d expect in a first novel.
June 3, 2015
This fascinating story combines sci-fi elements with World War II-era aviation history. It also contrasts the technology of the 1940s against our gadget-filled present. The main plot point unfolds in the mountains above Driggs, Idaho, which is a real location. But the bulk of the story takes place in a world so far away from Earth that only the most sophisticated scientific equipment can even detect its presence in the sky.
The detailed world created by Schultz in this novel reminded me of Orson Scott Card's Lusitania in _Speaker for the Dead_. For example, the complex relationship between humans and the Jabbaway, a birdlike species which most humans view as savage beasts, is both tragic and hopeful in terms of how it portrays the naturally xenophobic nature of typical humans and how that can be overcome to the benefit of all when we are truly willing to change.
I was also intrigued by the idea of intelligent stone which has the ability to communicate with and assist the human protagonists. The Gaia Theory views the Earth as a living entity which interacts with the species living upon and within it to create a complex web of life similar to that of each human being and the many species which live on our skin, in our digestive tracts, and even inside our very cells and without which we cannot survive. In Mormon cosmology, too, the Earth is a living entity which "fulfills the measure of its creation" and will one day be transformed and perfected just as humans and all other living creatures will.
If you enjoy this book, by the way, I recommend Ursula Le Guin's _The Beginning Place_, a story built on a somewhat similar premise. Her _The Telling_ is also worth checking out.
I understand that Schultz has two other novels in the works, one a sequel to this one. I'm looking forward to reading them.
The detailed world created by Schultz in this novel reminded me of Orson Scott Card's Lusitania in _Speaker for the Dead_. For example, the complex relationship between humans and the Jabbaway, a birdlike species which most humans view as savage beasts, is both tragic and hopeful in terms of how it portrays the naturally xenophobic nature of typical humans and how that can be overcome to the benefit of all when we are truly willing to change.
I was also intrigued by the idea of intelligent stone which has the ability to communicate with and assist the human protagonists. The Gaia Theory views the Earth as a living entity which interacts with the species living upon and within it to create a complex web of life similar to that of each human being and the many species which live on our skin, in our digestive tracts, and even inside our very cells and without which we cannot survive. In Mormon cosmology, too, the Earth is a living entity which "fulfills the measure of its creation" and will one day be transformed and perfected just as humans and all other living creatures will.
If you enjoy this book, by the way, I recommend Ursula Le Guin's _The Beginning Place_, a story built on a somewhat similar premise. Her _The Telling_ is also worth checking out.
I understand that Schultz has two other novels in the works, one a sequel to this one. I'm looking forward to reading them.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews