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Marvel Berkley/Byron Preiss Productions Prose Novels
X-Men: Law of the Jungle
One of the X-Men's oldest, deadliest foes, the energy - stealing creature known as Sauron, has returned to menace the Savage Land - the prehistoric jungle hidden in the Antartic. At the behest of their old ally Ka-Zar, the Savage Land's protector, Wolverine, Storm, the Beast, Iceman, Psylocke, Cannonball, and Archangel have come to help stop Sauron's latest reign of terror.
But this is not the same Sauron the X-Men have defeated in the past. Gone is the overconfident, boasting monster, and in his place is a cunning, careful, deadly foe who may be too much for even the X-Men to handle!
But this is not the same Sauron the X-Men have defeated in the past. Gone is the overconfident, boasting monster, and in his place is a cunning, careful, deadly foe who may be too much for even the X-Men to handle!
293 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1998
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 14, 2020
This is a good X-prose novel, particularly those with a good working knowledge of the x-panded member characters. The book is set in the Savage Land, where Ka-Zar (and don't forget Shanna the She-Devil or Zabu!) needs help in opposing Sauron, an old X-foe. The team consists of Wolverine, Storm, Beast, Iceman, Psylocke, Cannonball, and Archangel. It's a nice break from the Xavier/Jean Grey/Cyclops dominated teams in almost all of thee books up to this time. Storm comports herself admirably, and has some nice exchanges with Logan, but it's Betsy Braddock who steals the book and saves the day. (Oops... retro-spoiler warning...) In the immortal words of the M.M.M.S. from 1964: Face front, lift your head, you're on the winning team, nuff said!
June 3, 2011
I love the cover of this book with a passion. Wolverine in all his violent fury caught up in a battle with Sauron is a great piece of artwork that catches the eyes immediately. Unfortunately, the one page pictures that appear at the beginning of every chapter aren't particular good at all and left me wishing they had just hired the guy who inked the cover to do the one page illustrations also.
The prose novel 'Law of the Jungle' predominantly takes place in the Savage Land, which is a prehistoric jungle hidden in the Antarctic, and while I'm not a fan of such a nonsensical idea the author brings the place to life and makes you believe it's a realm that exists. The X-Men have been summoned there by Ka-Zar, who is the protector of the Savage Lands, to help him in his fight against the tyrannical Sauron (the flying lizard on the cover) who is terrorizing his lands and killing his people. With the other X-Men engaged elsewhere it's left to the team of Wolverine, Beast, Storm, Iceman, Psylocke, Cannonball and Archangel to enter the Savage Lands and do whatever they can to stop Sauron's reign of terror.
I liked that a few different characters were added to the X-Men team in this novel with a few of the mainstays taken out...namely Cyclops and Jean Grey. Most of the X-Men novels feature the aforementioned couple and rightly so as Cyclops is the leader of the X-Men and Jean Grey is his wife and an original member of the team. However, that means there's usually very little variant in the prose novels on who compromises the X-Men even though it's a team of super-powered mutants whose membership changes quite often.
The story itself is one of the better ones in relation to the series of X-Men prose novels...no evil sweaters in this one!*
If you're not familiar with Psylocke she posses both telepathy and telekinesis and looks a lot like Elektra only adorned in blue/purple rather than red. She has a psychic knife and is a martial arts expert. As for the other not used so often character, namely Cannonball, he can fly at jet speeds shooting himself from the ground through the air like a cannonball, while encased in an invulnerable force field.
In between the attempts to stop Sauron there is some focus on the blossoming relationship between Psylocke and Archangel and in that sense they take the place of Cyclops and Jean Grey. Thankfully it's not overdone because X-Men fans aren't generally looking for romantic off shoots in their novels. It does serve as a well written detraction from the action taking place and is used to slow the story down and add more depth to the two characters with more of an emphasis being placed on Psylocke.
I always feel that any well established characters have to be part of a greater story in order to keep the reader interested. What do I mean by that? Well, take any major novel and its characters that are part of a series - say Bones and Cat from the Night Huntress series for instance - and you know that they aren't going to be killed as they're very much part of a franchise. As such, when they battle an evil adversary you know that they will overcome them or, at the very least, live to renew the fight another day. The same thing applies to the X-Men and so the ending is very much a forgone conclusion before you even start the book...good will triumph over evil. Due to this the story has to be compelling otherwise there's no point in continuing reading to see how it all turns out as the heroes will always win. 'Law of the Jungle' succeeds in being compelling and is very much up there with the best of the X-Men prose novels and if the new X-Men movie has whetted your appetite for this genre of book then I would recommend this particular novel as being a great place to start.
*It's embarrassing, as an fan of X-Men prose novels, to have to inform you of the situation of Rogue being bested by a bunch of flying sweaters that attack and ultimately smother her in the first novel of the X-Men/Avengers 'Gamma Quest Trilogy'. Some ideas should never see the light of day and that was certainly one of them. Shameful.
The prose novel 'Law of the Jungle' predominantly takes place in the Savage Land, which is a prehistoric jungle hidden in the Antarctic, and while I'm not a fan of such a nonsensical idea the author brings the place to life and makes you believe it's a realm that exists. The X-Men have been summoned there by Ka-Zar, who is the protector of the Savage Lands, to help him in his fight against the tyrannical Sauron (the flying lizard on the cover) who is terrorizing his lands and killing his people. With the other X-Men engaged elsewhere it's left to the team of Wolverine, Beast, Storm, Iceman, Psylocke, Cannonball and Archangel to enter the Savage Lands and do whatever they can to stop Sauron's reign of terror.
I liked that a few different characters were added to the X-Men team in this novel with a few of the mainstays taken out...namely Cyclops and Jean Grey. Most of the X-Men novels feature the aforementioned couple and rightly so as Cyclops is the leader of the X-Men and Jean Grey is his wife and an original member of the team. However, that means there's usually very little variant in the prose novels on who compromises the X-Men even though it's a team of super-powered mutants whose membership changes quite often.
The story itself is one of the better ones in relation to the series of X-Men prose novels...no evil sweaters in this one!*
If you're not familiar with Psylocke she posses both telepathy and telekinesis and looks a lot like Elektra only adorned in blue/purple rather than red. She has a psychic knife and is a martial arts expert. As for the other not used so often character, namely Cannonball, he can fly at jet speeds shooting himself from the ground through the air like a cannonball, while encased in an invulnerable force field.
In between the attempts to stop Sauron there is some focus on the blossoming relationship between Psylocke and Archangel and in that sense they take the place of Cyclops and Jean Grey. Thankfully it's not overdone because X-Men fans aren't generally looking for romantic off shoots in their novels. It does serve as a well written detraction from the action taking place and is used to slow the story down and add more depth to the two characters with more of an emphasis being placed on Psylocke.
I always feel that any well established characters have to be part of a greater story in order to keep the reader interested. What do I mean by that? Well, take any major novel and its characters that are part of a series - say Bones and Cat from the Night Huntress series for instance - and you know that they aren't going to be killed as they're very much part of a franchise. As such, when they battle an evil adversary you know that they will overcome them or, at the very least, live to renew the fight another day. The same thing applies to the X-Men and so the ending is very much a forgone conclusion before you even start the book...good will triumph over evil. Due to this the story has to be compelling otherwise there's no point in continuing reading to see how it all turns out as the heroes will always win. 'Law of the Jungle' succeeds in being compelling and is very much up there with the best of the X-Men prose novels and if the new X-Men movie has whetted your appetite for this genre of book then I would recommend this particular novel as being a great place to start.
*It's embarrassing, as an fan of X-Men prose novels, to have to inform you of the situation of Rogue being bested by a bunch of flying sweaters that attack and ultimately smother her in the first novel of the X-Men/Avengers 'Gamma Quest Trilogy'. Some ideas should never see the light of day and that was certainly one of them. Shameful.
September 11, 2022
In the 1990s Marvel Comics exploded into overproduction causing a great increase in terms of quantity, but a real reduction of overall quality in at least half of that production. This turned out to be a business model that landed Marvel in bankruptcy by the turn of the century. They emerged, thankfully, a little smarter and slightly lighter a few years later. A profusion of novels based on Marvel superhero characters, such as this one, was one of the many results of the overproduction.
That said, Marvel did well to comission Dave Smeds to write this novel. Smeds is a novelist first, a Nebula Award candidate writing one at that, and he is writing in the form that is his strength, the novel, rather than graphic art. Also, Dave Smeds clearly loves his subject matter. I would not be surprised to learn that Smeds had read every X-Men comic from 1963 published up through 1998. He is steeped in the lore and wants to share it all with the reader. As a result, we get no less than 70 named characters in this rather short novel. Anyone other than a long time Marvel Comics reader will quickly be overwhelmed by all the references. For example, what was gained by mentioning Joelle, Cannonball's little sister, (page 123), Captain Britain (page 60), or Bruce Banner and Dr. Leonard Sampson (page 224), who feature in the story not at all?
The story was entertaining and expands on (acts as a sequel to) a Roy Thomas, Neal Adams tale, if I am not mistaken, that was written in the late 1960s that featured a villain named Sauron (Kyle Lykos). I haven't read that story. It was a few years before my time. But no matter, Smeds nicely recaps what we need to know from that X-Men issue.
It is an entertaining fight, well told, by Smeds, and completely believable given the parameters of that world. Smeds writes an entertaining sequel. The only small problem I have with the novel is that it takes maybe four hours to read, but contains not much more in terms of plot than a two-issue sequence of comics that would take 40 minutes to read and tell the story as well if it were in graphic art form. In other words, this four-hour experience feels somewhat drawn out, not that this is Smeds' fault. It's a limitation of the form not working quite as well as its native form.
Recommended for long-time Marvel comics readers and for fans of the X-Men, but not the general reader so much, particularly now that 24 years have passed since its writing and so much has happened since to the X-Men.
That said, Marvel did well to comission Dave Smeds to write this novel. Smeds is a novelist first, a Nebula Award candidate writing one at that, and he is writing in the form that is his strength, the novel, rather than graphic art. Also, Dave Smeds clearly loves his subject matter. I would not be surprised to learn that Smeds had read every X-Men comic from 1963 published up through 1998. He is steeped in the lore and wants to share it all with the reader. As a result, we get no less than 70 named characters in this rather short novel. Anyone other than a long time Marvel Comics reader will quickly be overwhelmed by all the references. For example, what was gained by mentioning Joelle, Cannonball's little sister, (page 123), Captain Britain (page 60), or Bruce Banner and Dr. Leonard Sampson (page 224), who feature in the story not at all?
The story was entertaining and expands on (acts as a sequel to) a Roy Thomas, Neal Adams tale, if I am not mistaken, that was written in the late 1960s that featured a villain named Sauron (Kyle Lykos). I haven't read that story. It was a few years before my time. But no matter, Smeds nicely recaps what we need to know from that X-Men issue.
It is an entertaining fight, well told, by Smeds, and completely believable given the parameters of that world. Smeds writes an entertaining sequel. The only small problem I have with the novel is that it takes maybe four hours to read, but contains not much more in terms of plot than a two-issue sequence of comics that would take 40 minutes to read and tell the story as well if it were in graphic art form. In other words, this four-hour experience feels somewhat drawn out, not that this is Smeds' fault. It's a limitation of the form not working quite as well as its native form.
Recommended for long-time Marvel comics readers and for fans of the X-Men, but not the general reader so much, particularly now that 24 years have passed since its writing and so much has happened since to the X-Men.
July 16, 2019
This was an okay book that told a story about an X-Men adventure in the Savage Land. Honestly it reminded me of the 90’s cartoon with all the action in it.
It wasn’t terrible but it would have been better as an episode of the show rather than a book.
It wasn’t terrible but it would have been better as an episode of the show rather than a book.
May 23, 2023
Pretty good read. Simple plot. Relaxing excursion to the savage lands. It has some nice dialogue, particularly for beast and iceman. The tension at the end was great, and it involved Ka-Zar nicely. Sauron was a fresh villain.
April 18, 2022
This was a good story. I learn a lot about Psylocke- I dig her. She should have been on the cover.
June 3, 2009
This is a fun, albeit generic, adventure in the Savage Land (a prehistoric, dinosaur-infested area of Anarctica disguised by "cloud cover"). Sauron, the hypnotic, energy-vampire pterodactyl-man, is up to his old tricks again, and it's up to Storm, Wolverine, Archangel, Psylocke, Beast, Iceman, and Cannonball (alongside Ka-Zar, Lord of the Savage Land, his wife Shanna the She-Devil, and Zabu, their pet sabre-tooth tiger) to stop him. Sauron is of course aided by Magneto's evil mutates such as the frog-like Amphibius, blind but super-strong Gaza, four-armed Barbarus, wolf-man Lupo, and female dizzy-spell-inducing Vertigo. The story is basically that some of the X-Men get captured and the rest try to rescue them, but it's well-done overall, and also has a romantic sub-plot with Archangel and Psylocke I wasn't aware of, as well as a neat, unexpected orgin story flashback from Lupo's point of view.
June 1, 2012
This novel is based on a comic book, and like comics (and many text-based book series, as well), it assumes you have knowledge of the characters going in. My problem is that there is a big gap between the time I stopped reading comics and the point where this book begins. There are some expository paragraphs scattered throughout, and I think I eventually got everything I needed to know - but some of that required me to wait until I was almost done. (I wonder if that would have been true had I come in with ZERO knowledge of any of the characters?)
Good book for fans of the comic. Fair to good for casual readers. not so good for non-fans, but then, those folks would be unlikely to pick up a copy in the first place.
Good book for fans of the comic. Fair to good for casual readers. not so good for non-fans, but then, those folks would be unlikely to pick up a copy in the first place.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews