Doc Savage must pursue the X Man, an insane man found wandering the ruins of a crumbling Roman fort and who has escaped from Wyndmoor Asylum, bent on unleashing a cyclone of violence on modern-day New York.
Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:
William G. Bogart Evelyn Coulson Harold A. Davis Lawrence Donovan Alan Hathway W. Ryerson Johnson
Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.
All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.
The first thing you need to know about the Doc Savage books is that Kenneth Robeson does not exist..Look him up. Doc Savage very 'boys toys' American action Marvel still Agents of Shield style hero. Inhuman Tarzan
The Forgotten Realm is a "Doc Savage" novel by Will Murray writing as Kenneth Robeson. This book is one of the All-New Adventures of Doc Savage and was written in 1993, about 60 years after the original Doc Savage books were written. For the most part, this book reads like the original books although it is twice as long as the Bantam reprints that I read as a teenager in the 60s and 70s. I enjoyed reading this one very much and I will probably read some more of the newer books when I can find them. In this one, Doc Savage and his men are in the thick of it again. The action is classic Doc Savage, filled with good old-fashioned adventure and gadgets that always seem to be there when the hero needs them. You can relax and escape for a little while. A good read in the Doc Savage series.
Before there were superheroes, there was Doc Savage. The Man of Bronze and his five assistants encountered amazing adventures in bizarre forgotten lands. They're explorers and they're adventures. The Savage books represent a high point of men's adventures.
The Forgotten Realm begins when a man known only Xman escapes from a Scottish insane asylum. Quickly, we finds our heroes starting a wild journey in England that will lead them into the heart of Africa where they'll encounter Pygmies and Ancient Roman legions. Are they going back in time? The mystery abounds.
Overall, this was just a superb men's adventure book. While it was completed by Will Murray in the 1990s, it has a real period feel to it and manages to capture the Spirit of the original.
The plot is just a wild ride of plane crashes, gas bombs, sea battles, gladiatorial fights, mystery, impersonations. It's perfectly paced and a ton of fun.
This book features only three of Doc's fabulous five assistant but that seems to work here. In both my previous encounters with the Man of Bronze in Showcase Presents: Doc Savage and in the radio version, it felt like there were too many characters to get in. Here, they strike the balance with Ham and Monk, each other's continual foils added to the verbose Johnny Littlejohn to make the action complete.
If you want to press it, I'm suppose you can find problems with the book like whether the place they went to truly didn't keep track of time, or whether it was really necessary to refer to Ham as "the dapper lawyer" every time he was described. But this is a book that's really meant to be enjoyed not analyzed and man it definitely did its job.
Doc Savage and the Forgotten Realm I’ve been reading the new Doc Savage Novels by Will Murray for the past few months. This one, ‘The Forgotten Realm’ is actually one that was released in the early ‘90’s and now has been re-released. This is a rousing, fairly fast paced adventure that really held my attention. Doc, Monk, Ham and Johnny globe trot to England and then the heart of Africa itself, where the team has to fight three lions and a gorilla in a coliseum type battle. This to me was the high point of the novel with Doc snapping a lions neck bare handed- Take THAT Tarzan! This book has it all, an excellent mystery, as well as a good amount of action and intriguing villains. Will is obviously a fan of Monk as he is in the forefront in all the new Doc Savage novels I have read, this one particularly. One of the high points was Monk battling a maddened bull ape in the aforementioned arena. It was a very satisfying Doc Savage story; in fact I have to say it was the absolute best of the Will Murray written novels I have read. I cannot recommend this novel highly enough. It was a pleasure to read and I was sad to see it end.
A fine addition to the adventures of Doc Savage and his amazing crew. Will Murray, working from the notes and unfinished material of Lester Dent, has delivered an adventure which, when compared to the original books, is nearly 3 times as long as readers are accustomed. Does it deliver 3 times the thrills and excitement? Well, maybe not 3 times. It does have a slight tendency to meander and develop tangential distractions, something that the terse demands of the pulp market would not allow. Despite it's weaknesses it certainly lives up to the Kenneth Robeson tradition.
Read the Kindle version, but this is not one of the options. Doc Savage was one of my all timie favorite reads growing up. The stories by Kenneth Robeson (Lester Dent) never get old. Will Murray has done a fantastic job in bringing Doc (and now The Avenger) back to life. I look forward to many more years of enjoyment reading these classics! Pulp fiction at it's finest!!!
This is one of the best of the Doc Savage continuations that Will Murray has produced. It features Johnnie along with Monk and Ham, and is a gloriously pulpish madcap adventure in the best globe-trotting tradition. Super-science, a lost civilization, coliseum battles... Indy would've fit right in!
Another of the modern (1993/2012) additions to the Doc Savage Canon, better the the others I've read and worse than the originals. There's a lot of klugeing - spots where it's obvious the author(s) realized they need to add something and did whether or not it was relevant or meaningful or moved the story along. And this is the first Doc Savage I've read where Doc and Monk have a moment of "Am I getting too old for this?" I mean, really? This is Doc Savage. His team may have moments of hesitation, but Doc? Never!
The Forgotten Realm is based on notes by Lester Dent but ghost written by another author. It was a decent story with almost non-stop action. As usual, the premise was something that seemed other worldly and impossible but ended up being a much more mundane explanation after Doc and his cohorts got to the bottom of it. I had a great time even if the book was a bit on the moldy side. For a Doc Savage adventure, it was par with the others. Recommended.
so this book was ridiculous, as all the super-hero stories are. i was interested in it because of the hints to roman life and the background of scottish moors and lochs. for that part it was really fun to read and i liked how even the scottish accent was attempted. the story was gripping and well constructed, in the end i was really glued to the book. still i could not sympathize well with doc savage, i liked other characters much more. for example the pet piggie, haha. so a few really good laughs, a fun language and a nice story, but a for me bland superhero and some rather ridiculous characteristics of him. a quick but nice read for the beach :-)
These modern Doc Savage books are all about three times longer than the crisply written pulp originals, but they're great fun if you're in the mood for that sort of thing, and by "that sort of thing" I mean daring escapes, Indiana Jones music, crazy monsters, lost kingdoms, and bad guys who say, "Youse". It was nice to see Johnny Littlejohn as a main character for once, though as usual Monk and Ham chew most of the scenery.
A man speaking classical Latin and dressed in a toga is found in Roman ruins in Scotland, and promptly put away in a lunatic asylum. Doc Savage and his crew investigate with the possibility the stranger may have come through time at the back of their minds.
Good pulp style novel, there's always something happening and lots of action.