The Tower of the Elephant (Conan Chronicles #3) 3.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Tower of the Elephant
Series: Conan Chronicles #3
Author: Robert Howard
Rating: 3.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 30
Words: 9K
Publish: 1933

This Conan story goes back into the past, when Conan is still a young thief. He is in a new city, chasing down a legendary and quite possibly fictional, treasure called the Heart of the Elephant. It is contained within a wizard’s tower.

The opening scene shows how brash Conan is as a young man. He demands answers. He’s, not exactly insecure, but unsure of the situation in the inn due to his inexperience with merchants and this city. Thus his confrontation with the merchant and his having to leave rather quickly. He might be unsure of some things, but he’s never at a loss when it comes to “doing” things.

And that leads him to attempt the robbery of the tower that very night. No planning, no reconnaissance, just Conan going to the tower to try to break in. Once again, it shows his young brashness but he’s not stupid. He meets a skilled thief who is also attempting to rob the wizard and the team up. This is why I say Conan isn’t stupid. He knows the other thief has more experience and knowledge and is more than willing to go along with him. The old thief dies in a trap and that puts Conan on his guard. Because he really wasn’t before, even though he was robbing a wizard’s tower of its most treasured and magical possession.

When Conan meets the wizard’s mentor, who is now a mutilated being imprisoned on a throne of jade, things move slightly into the cosmic horror side of things. And that is a good thing because Conan isn’t just a barbarian fighting other humans, but a Force of Nature that those cosmic beings crash against. It’s very much the “Yes, there are terrible, horrible, no-good things out there. But our indomitable human spirit will conquer all!” kind of attitude that I like in my stories. Don’t give me this defeatist crap we see in books today where everything is hopeless and wrecked beyond recovery and everybody just sits on their ass bewailing how “done bad” they’ve been. Get off your ass and DO something, no matter how small. There are times I wish characters like Conan were real just so he could kill off all those lousy purveyors of despair and hopelessness. Anyway…. the mentor ends up helping Conan kill the sorcerer and Conan escapes with his life and nothing else.

That is one thing I’m not a fan of about Conan, he’s not a wise financial decision maker ;-) Hahahahaa.

★★★✬☆

From Wikipedia

In the Zamorian city of Arenjun also known as the "City of Thieves,” Conan drinks in a tavern. He overhears a Kothic rogue describe a fabulous jewel known as the "Heart of the Elephant," which is kept in a tower by an evil sorcerer named Yara.

Conan ventures into Yara's garden to steal the jewel and encounters Taurus of Nemedia, known as the "Prince of Thieves,” who has the same agenda. Taurus is wily and fat, but amazingly agile. Impressed by Conan's daring, Taurus agrees to work together. After battling lions in the tower gardens, the thieves ascend Yara's spire. Upon reaching the top, Taurus enters a treasure vault and is killed by the venomous bite of a giant spider. Conan crushes the spider with a chest of gems, then continues his search for the Heart of the Elephant.

He discovers a strange being with the body of a man and the head of an elephant. The creature, Yag-kosha, is a blind and tortured prisoner of Yara.

Yag-kosha reveals to Conan the pre-cataclysmic saga of his people, their arrival on Earth, and how he taught Yara the art of magic only to have his apprentice betray him. At Yag-kosha's request, Conan grabs the fabled jewel, kills the being, extracts the heart from his corpse, and drips its blood over the Heart of the Elephant. When he sets the blood-infused relic in front of Yara in his sleeping-chamber, the gem's magic shrinks and draws the sorcerer into the jewel. Inside, a revived Yag-kosha, limbs and wings restored, pursues the screaming Yara, and the Heart vanishes.

Obeying Yag-kosha's instructions, Conan leaves, emerging empty-handed from the tower at dawn as it collapses behind him. He has nothing after his night's work except for his sword, loin-cloth, and sandals.

• The “Essential Conan” Trilogy

• All of My “Conan the Barbarian” Reviews

• All of My “Conan Chronicles” Reviews

Lifelace - MTG 4E

 

This is the Green lace card. Black had "Deathlace" and Red had "Chaoslace". While I like the idea of the "Lace" cards, as a beginning player I never found a good use for them. Even now, I suspect I wouldn't be able to find a good use for them. Cards like these are the chaff of the set and you would have to try really hard to make something good work out of them. But for some people, that is half the fun, ie, trying to make "jank" (the magic term for garbage cards, I have no idea where it came from) cards work. I am not one of those people though. So I will just look at the card and admire the art and call it a day. 

He Is Risen!

 

Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God, died for our sins and paid the penalty that a Just God demanded. Jesus showed His power over sin by not just dying for them, but overcoming them and rising from the dead. If you accept Him as Lord and Savior, you don't need to fear death or what awaits you in the afterlife.

Blessed Resurrection Sunday to one and all!

How Do You Follow Blogs?

 

Just as there are a multitude of platforms to blog from (wordpress, blogspot, tumblr, substack, etc) there are also a multitude of ways to follow those blogs. The ways I am aware of are as such:

• Wordpress.com Reader
• RSS Reader, such as Feedly
• A Manual List of links saved somewhere easy to access for you

I use the Wordpress reader, which technically IS a form of an rss reader. It has its set of problems, which is why I am looking at other potentials. The biggest problem I have is that wordpress will randomly unsubscribe me from people's blogs. I follow around 45 blogs and it can be hard to keep track if someone has simply dropped off the blogging radar or if WP has unsubscribed me. I've tried counting and come up with different numbers on different days. And then I come up with different numbers whether I'm using the Jetpack app on my phone or online on my web browser.

The reason I keep using the WP Reader even with those issues is because of the notification system that WP has. While it sometimes falls down on the job of letting me know of pingbacks (when another wordpress site links to a specific post of mine, I get notified), in terms of letting me know about likes and comments and replies to comments, it does an excellent job.

From what I understand, RSS Feeders like Feedly don't do that. They simply list the sites you are following and the new posts by them. All other interactions are null. I also don't know if an rss feeder can unsubscribe you randomly like WP does.

Finally, keeping a list of the sites you follow however it is most convenient to you. Back in my early Blogspot days I had a separate blog dedicated to just the sites I followed. I checked them every day and went back to every site I had left a comment on in case the blog owner had replied. I was only following about 20 people and that dwindled drastically when Facebook opened up to the public. So it was do-able. I also wasn't working 45hrs a week. Now? I do NOT have the oomph to repeat that.

So what I want to know is how you keep up with the blogs you follow. Also, are keeping track of "Likes" and "Comments" important to you or not? I really want to know how you all do this aspect of blogging. Let me know in the comments. Cheers!

Tower of Terror (Able Team #1) 2.5Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Tower of Terror
Series: Able Team #1
Author: Dick Stivers
Rating: 2.5 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 123
Words: 41K
Publish: 1982

Sigh. I knew after reading The Stony Man Doctrine in January (no review) that this attempt at reading more of the 80’s and 90’s Men’s Adventure Stories probably wasn’t going to be a splendid success. Even still, this was not what I was hoping for.

There is action. Bad guys get beaten up, the good guys get beaten up. People are shot and kabloo’ied and kidnapped to my heart’s content. The problem is that there was a LOT of running around or driving around between those bits and that was so boring that I was going out of my skull.

I was expecting a Die Hard rip off, even though Die Hard hadn’t been produced yet ;-) The actual stuff at the tower takes about the final 10% of the book. Able Teams gets in, kills the bad guys, rescues the hostages and warns all the law enforcement outside about tons of booby traps inside. The End. I wanted some cat and mouse inside the so-called Tower of Terror. Alas, it simply was not to be.

Finding out that the owner of the company that owned the tower was embezzling possible billions of dollars and using the terrorists as a cover, was a good idea. It just didn’t translate into good writing which would have translated into a better story.

I know I loved the Mack Bolan books as a teenager and not so much as an adult (Mack Bolan #448) and that has carried over to these other Gold Eagle productions. I’m not surprised or even disappointed, but I admit I was hoping that maybe the boy inside me would like this more. I’ve got one more “Action Man” book to read, about another group of special forces men, called Phoenix Force and then I’ll be done with these.

★★✬☆☆

From the Publisher

A Wall Street skyscraper had been invaded. Hostages were being held - and, with them, enough confidential banking data to imperil the entire world.

Ugly, city-wide panic was inevitable until Able Team was called in. Carl Lyons, Pol Blancanales and Gadgets Schwarz were the only possible hardmen for such a mission.

The invaders claimed to be FALN, the Puerto Rican terrorist group. But they were not who they said they were, and their huge quantity of devastating armament appeared to have come from. . . the Vietnamese.

The Return of the Black Widowers (The Black Widowers #6) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: The Return of the Black Widowers
Series: The Black Widowers #6
Authors: Isaac Asimov
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Mystery
Pages: 270
Words: 108K
Publish: 2003

This is the final, posthumous volume of the Black Widowers stories. When I started, I was under the impression it was all reprints with a new intro and some blathering by other authors. I was quite glad to find several new stories AND a new Black Widower inspired story by another author.

The intro by Harlan Ellison was a complete failure in my opinion. I’ve never read Ellison and after this intro, I never plan to. I don’t like the man’s humor, his writing style nor how he manages his words. He was supposed to be praising Asimov and maybe in his own way, he was. But I disliked it from the start. The afterwards, from Asimov’s autobiography was a bit better, but that might just be because of my aversion to the Introduction.

What really surprised me, in a good way, was the two guest stories that were excellently done. I was expecting some hackneyed writing that was riding on the coat tails. Instead, I got two stories that I thought were worthy of inclusion with the rest of the Black Widower tales. That’s a good way to end.

It has also inspired me to go read Asimov’s memoirs. I hope I have better luck with that than some of the memoirs I’ve read in the past ;-)

★★★☆☆

From Wikipedia.org

• "Introduction" (Harlan Ellison)

• "The Acquisitive Chuckle" (from Tales of the Black Widowers)

• "Ph As in Phony" (from Tales of the Black Widowers)

• "Early Sunday Morning" (from Tales of the Black Widowers)

• "The Obvious Factor" (from Tales of the Black Widowers)

• "The Iron Gem" (from More Tales of the Black Widowers)

• "To the Barest" (from Casebook of the Black Widowers)

• "Sixty Million Trillion Combinations" (from Banquets of the Black Widowers)

• "The Wrong House" (from Banquets of the Black Widowers)

• "The Redhead" (from Banquets of the Black Widowers)

• "Triple Devil" (from Puzzles of the Black Widowers)

• "The Men Who Read Isaac Asimov" (William Brittain)

• "Northwestward" (from Magic)

• "Yes, but Why?"

• "Lost in a Space Warp"

• "Police at the Door"

• "The Haunted Cabin"

• "The Guest's Guest"

• "The Woman in the Bar" (from Banquets of the Black Widowers)

• "The Last Story" (Charles Ardai)

• "Afterword" (from I. Asimov)

• All of My Asimov Reviews

March '26 Circum et Pervagatus

 

Raw Data:

Novels/Novellas - 13 ↑

Short Stories - 0 ↓

Manga/Graphic Novels - 0 -

Comics - 1 -

Average Rating - 3.32 ↑

Pages - 2667 ↑

Words - 934K ↑

The Bad:

Grunge - 2stars of REALLY bad theology

The Hero and the Crown - 2stars of teen girl cringiness

The Good:

The Doorbell Rang - 4stars of Nero Wolfe, fightin' da mahn!

Drumindor - 4stars of returning to a beloved franchise

Movie:

Apocalypse, the second in the Resident Evil movie franchise, was fun. I like these movies :-)

Miscellaneous Posts:

• Sun Lamp Review
• Land Tax - MTG 4E
• Daylight Saving: The Vanishing Hour
• Leviathan - MTG 4E
• Imperatoris Chronicorum I
• Ley Druid - MTG 4E
• [Art] Maiden of Spring 2026
• Library of Leng - MTG 4E
• Who Bookstooge Is, According to AI
• Lifeforce - MTG 4E

Personal:

We have a saying here in New England: "In Like a Lion, Out like a Lamb". This is in reference to March's weather. You can also reverse it. So if March starts off, say, by dumping almost 2feet of snow on you and then continues to snow every week, well, that's coming in like a lion. It means we're supposed to get gradually better and ease into April with warmer temps and smaller amounts of moisture. Ha! Ha I say. March came roaring in like a lion and dragged our carcass all over the place the entire month and then we got ticks from that lion when he left. Boooooo!

Work has changed a bit. We had one of the crew chiefs (we have 3 crews, each consisting of 2 men) leave end of February, beginning of March and one of the other instrument operators (not a crew chief) left last Friday. So we are down to 2 crews, just as the spring is coming and our busy season is starting to ramp up. Not that we haven't been busy before, mind you. There is a lot of work and we don't have the manpower to handle it. I'm glad I don't have to deal with that problem in the office.

The medication that Mrs B has been taking for close to 15 years now for her crohns disease is no longer effective so her GI dr (gastroenterologist) is trying to switch her to something else. We'll see how that shakes out with insurance. It'll be the same battle as her old medication but on a new hill, sigh. I'm also dealing with my own insulin changes but without the help of a Endocrinologist, just my family practice doctor. It is just going from name brand to generic, so it's more about the doctors office filling out the prescription correctly so the insurance accepts it. Let me digress for a second...

(Health Insurance is the worst thing to happen to our medical system here in the US, ever. There have been times that I have wanted to off every single Health Insurance CEO and their entire board of directors. They will burn for their crimes in the afterlife, for sure!)

Mrs B and I were introduced to the card game Munchkins last year and for Christmas we got 7 of the expansions to the game. We've been playing a game a couple of times a month and it's been fun. It is a simple game but with just enough complexity to keep me interested while not being so complex that Mrs B throws up her hands in despair (like Magic the Gathering). I like it enough that I'm even considering getting the Munchkins: Warhammer 40,000 version :-D That would all depend on whether Mrs B will play that or not.

Finally, since I changed the boring "My Week" posts to the sizzling and exciting "Imperatoris Chronicorum", I decided to latinize these Monthly Roundup & Rambling posts as well, because nothing says sizzling and exciting like a re-branding of the same exact product ;-)
Ave, Caesar Bookstooge, morituri te salutant!

Cover Love:

Nothing was good enough to take the effort to put a full size picture in my dropbox account, create and edit the dropbox link so that WP will accept it and then put it here. Sometimes it is worth it and sometimes not. This was a "Not" month.

Plans for Next Month:

RE: Extinction will be reviewed next week.

Magic cards every Monday! Whooowheee ;-)

Exactly the same as this month. I'm still fighting the (losing) battle to keep Wednesdays free but I'm not giving in completely.

FREEEEEEEDOM!!! (to not blog if I don't want to)