Blaylock, James P. Books

The Knights of the Cornerstone

James P. Blaylock

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Editorial Review:

An exquisite novel of fantasy from a “true one-of-a-kind original” (Neil Gaiman).

Calvin Bryson has hidden himself away from the world, losing himself in his work and his collection of rare and quirky books. He never meant to let so much time go by without visiting his aunt and uncle in the tiny town of New Cyprus, California. When he gets there, he’ll discover the town’s strange secrets and a mysterious group dedicated to preserving and protecting holy relics—a modernday incarnation of the legendary Knights Templar…

The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives

James P. Blaylock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

A good deal of controversy arose late in the last century over what has been referred to by the more livid newspapers as The Horror in St. James Park or The Ape-box Affair....

So begins the first chronicle in the long and often obscure life of Langdon St. Ives, Victorian scientist and adventurer, respected member of the Explorers Club and of societies far more obscure, consultant to scientific luminaries, and secret, unheralded savior of humankind. From the depths of the Borneo jungles to the starlit reaches of outer space, and ultimately through the dark corridors of past and future time, the adventures of Langdon St. Ives invariably lead him back to the streets and alleys of the busiest, darkest, most secretive city in the world -- London in the age of steam and gaslamps, with the Thames fog settling in over the vast city of perpetual evening. St. Ives, in pursuit of the infamous Dr. Ignacio Narbondo, discovers the living horror of revivified corpses, the deep sea mystery of a machine with the power to drag ships to their doom, and the appalling threat of a skeleton-piloted airship descending toward the city of London itself, carrying within its gondola a living homunculus with the power to drive men mad....

This omnibus volume contains the collected Steampunk stories and novels of James P. Blaylock, one of the originators of the genre, which hearkens back to the worlds of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, a world where science was a work of the imagination, and the imagination was endlessly free to dream.

The Adventures of Langdon St. Ives will contain the original illustrations J. K. Potter created for the novel Lord Kelvin's Machine, plus many more for the novel, Homunculus, and the short stories.

The Digging Leviathan

James P. Blaylock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

First of a new style of literature 5 out of 5 stars.
14 of 14 people found this review helpful.

I first read this book in the mid 80's, and it made me a Blaylock fan for life. I had never read anything like it, and can count on my fingers the books of this style I have read since (why couldn't Blaylock be a little more prolific?). Apparently, this book was completely misunderstood by his Balumnia (i.e. Elfin ship, etc.) publisher (Del Ray) forcing him to turn to other houses to get it published. I am grateful he was so persistent.

A young boy with gills and webbed fingers builds a digging machine to travel to the center of the earth. The machine is much like the many complex devices constructed by preteen inventors who are disapointed that the laws of physics didn't bend to their wills. But this boy is different...

Editorial Review:

Science Fiction. Southern California -- sunny days, blue skies, neighbors on flying bicycles ... ghostly submarines ... mermen off the Catalina coast ... and a vast underground sea stretching from the Pacific Ocean to the Inland Empire where Chinese junks ply an illicit trade and enormous creatures from ages past still survive. It is a place of wonder ... and dark conspiracies. A place rife with adventure - if one knows where to look for it. Two such seekers are the teenagers Jim Hastings and his friend, Giles Peach. Giles was born with a wonderful set of gills along his neck and insatiable appetite for reading. Drawing inspiration from the novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Giles is determined to build a Digging Leviathan. Will he reach the center of the earth? or destroy it in the process?

Pilot Light

Powers; Tim

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

Kind of a letdown 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I was hoping for a lost treasure, instead it seems to be a bunch of in jokes from Powers and Blaylock.

Notes from napkins... 1 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is not a novel, or a short story - it's a pamphlet. It's a very short satirical piece that is made up of a jumble of interviews, short story outtakes, and excessive annotations, all involving the fictional author William Ashbless. If you are looking for Tim Powers' usual excellent fiction - this is not it. For those who are closely following the history and adventures of William Ashbless, and are intensely interested in this main hero of Anubis Gate, I wouldn't recommend this pamphlet even for you. I am somewhat offended by Powers and Blaylock sticking it to their fans - this work, as a hard cover book is not worth it. If it had been included in a larger anthology of Ashbless' works, letters, and IOUs, then maybe I can see the value in that.

Editorial Review:

Those two madmen, Powers and Blaylock are back, with a recently unearthed and touched up short story thought lost to the ages. "Pilot Light" is vintage William Ashbless, complex to the point of incoherence, with a good eighteen footnotes added by the poet refuting and clarifying the changes made by Powers and Blaylock to his sacred words. Also included in this small form hardcover chapbook are an introduction by Powers and an afterword by Blaylock.

Homunculus

James P. Blaylock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Horribilus 2 out of 5 stars.
16 of 35 people found this review helpful.

"Homonculus" is Blaylock's unhappy attempt to maintain apace with his friends Tim Powers and K.W. Jeter, at a time when each was writing a pastiche set in a London of the 19th century. Jeter produced the amusing and strange "Infernal Devices", Powers wrote the now-legendary and award-winning "Anubis Gates" and Blaylock, well, Blaylock wrote this mess.

James Blaylock seems to suffer from the worst kind of Chris Columbus fantasy imaginings. Plot slowing down? Throw in a big, anachronistic machine! Don't waste time with character development, just dress 'em up and make 'em talk funny. That'll do it.

Overall, Blaylock seems unable to rise above mediocrity.

Editorial Review:

Homonculus is a fascinating trip to a London that never existed ... but perhaps should have.

Darkly atmospheric, Homonculus weaves together the stories of Narbondo -- a mad hunchback who works tirelessly to bring the dead back to life, of the members of the Trismegistus Club -- a surly group of scientists and philosophers who meet at Captain Powers' Pipe Shop, and of the homonculus -- a tiny man whose powers can drive men to murder.

The Devils in the Details

James P. Blaylock, Tim Powers

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Must for Fans of Powers and Blaylock 4 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Blaylock and Powers have been collaborating for thirty years, often implicitly influencing each other and sometimes, like here, collaborating on stories with both their names on them. Fans of either should appreciate the brief account of that collaboration in this book's afterward and introduction and, specifically, the comments on the volume's three stories.

As is typical for his shorter work, Powers abandons his characteristic secret histories. In "Through and Through", a weary, lukewarm priest confronts a ghost in the confessional and rethinks the power and significance of Catholic ritual. But, if we don't get an epic combining of magic and history, Powers still works in some interesting thoughts on the Garden of Eden.

The modern obsession with inclusivity on college campuses is satirized in Blaylock's "The Devil in the Details". A college president's attempt to build a Christian chapel is thwarted by forces both silly and sinister.

I must admit that I appreciated and understood Powers' and Blaylock's collaboration "Fifty Cents" more after reading Blaylock's afterward. But, even on the first reading, the protagonist's quest -- searching in used bookstores for a book once given to him by his dead wife -- and the odd characters he meets in his drive through the desert Southwest, kept me interested.

Each story gets its own introductory illustration, and Blaylock's afterword is in the form of an inserted pamphlet.

Collectors or fans of either of these authors will want this book not only for the stories but the accounts of a longstanding literary friendship.

Lord Kelvin's Machine: A Novel

James P. Blaylock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Not my cup of tea 2 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book wasn't to my liking. Like its predecessor, the villians are absurd - even more so than in Homunculus. They are like bad Adam-West-era Batman villians. And the time travel/history altering that goes on makes this hard to follow at points. And sometimes the characters' motivations are kind of difficult to understand (I mean, let your enemy die already!) Explosions, cackling insane villians damaging toy elephants (is that supposed to be symbolic or suggestive of the later animal damaging that goes on?)... this book was weird. Plus... why do the villians in these books always have to do yucky stuff to animals? Ugh.

That being said... the end is subtle and wonderful. Blaylock does a wonderful job of throughly crushing his hapless hero, and so his final redemption is completely, and convincingly, sweet.

Editorial Review:

Determined to avert the doom of his beloved wife, scientist and detective Langdon St. Ives sees his only hope for doing so in Lord Kelvin's time machine, but the diabolical Dr. Ignacio Narbondo has other plans for the invention. Reprint. AB.

All The Bells on Earth

James P. Blaylock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A Weird Christmas Tale 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Walt Stebbins is expecting a lean Christmas. While his back-stabbing former business partner rakes in the millions, Walt is loaded with nothing but uninvited holiday houseguests. When a package meant for his ex-partner, mistakenly delivered to Walt, turns out to contain a talisman of strange power -- a dead "bluebird of happiness" that promises to grant all wishes -- it seems the answer to a prayer. The truth is more complex-- and much more sinister.

James Blaylock's novels are hard to describe -- funny/serious, beautifully written, highly literate, quirky, surrealistic romps through a world of mystery lying just beneath the surface of prosaic suburban American life. The typical Blaylock story takes the kind of nice guy who proverbially finishes last and throws him in the midst of a cosmic battle between good & evil which is fought in banal, recognizable surroundings: strip malls, suburban lawns, donut shops. The effect is sort of G.K. Chesterton on acid: fables of high moral purpose with a much less rigid notion of morality than Chesterton's and a weirder sense of humor. Well-read readers with a taste for oddities should try them.

Editorial Review:

This is a homey fantasy, almost excessively so. Doughnuts, family tensions, relatives who arrive in a Winnebago, Christmas decorations, business worries, Uncle Henry's womanizing, and pyramid schemes wrap Walt Stebbins in layers of detail and distraction. Walt runs a small catalog business out of his garage, and he has no notion of a demonic presence in his town until a package is mistakenly delivered to him. The contents are not the inexpensive Chinese toys and novelties he deals in. The nasty-looking pickled bluebird of happiness ("Best thing come to you. Speak any wish.") piques Walt's interest, and he keeps it when he rewraps the box and passes it on to the addressee: the one person in the world Walt loathes, his former friend Robert Argyle. But Walt's keeping back the bluebird of happiness is the best thing that could have happened to Argyle--and the worst thing that could happen to Walt. What price happiness? If you have to ask ...

The Last Coin

James P. Blaylock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 21 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Offbeat Genius 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Like most of Blaylock's contemporary fantasies, this book left me with the odd but pleasurable sensation that the author was either a scant few inches from discovering the secrets of the Universe, or he was a complete idiot. Although I've met Mr. Blaylock on two or three occasions, I still can't make up my mind. In either case, this book is one of my very favorites. Only Blaylock would pit a delightfully quirky would-be Innkeeper like Andrew Vanbergen against the demonic Pennyman when the fate of the world hung in the balance. The plot, including its absurd references to the current street address of Judas Iscariot, is so wildly improbable that I have to suspect that it's true. This book is a must-read for anyone who's ever wondered if miracles and toaster ovens can co-exist in the same kitchen. Oh, and if you happen to run into Mr. Blaylock... ask him about the pig.

Jeff Edwards, Author of "Torpedo: A Surface Warfare Thriller"

Editorial Review:

An evil man strives for immortality by collecting the thirty pieces of silver that once belonged to Judas but somehow ended up in California, and only a sing coin stands between the world and certain apocalypse. Reissue. PW.

Land of Dreams

James P. Blaylock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A MAGIC THAT STAYS 5 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

While Land of Dreams works admirably as a supernatural thriller (the Solstice heralds a series of weird events, including the return of a sinister carnival, with diabolical results for the people of a northern California coastal town) and as an adventure yarn (three orphans face great perils as they unravel the mystery of the Solstice, the carnival, and the fabled Land of Dreams), the novel ultimately--through Blaylock's visionary prose--transcends both of these genres.

This book shares a virtue with the greatest works of Fantasy: the ability to open our eyes to the magic at work within our everyday lives. Doughnuts, old shoes, rainswept afternoons, fiddler crabs ... in Land of Dreams such commonplace things are transformed into vehicles of wonder, into nothing less than keys that just might open doors to the Other Side (for readers uninterested in the Other Side, or those who haven't the faintest idea of what I mean by the Other Side, a warning: stay clear of rabbit holes and the books of James P. Blaylock).

And while conventional supernatural and adventure novels are content to take the reader from point A to point B (in which conflict unfolds), and then to point C (where said conflict is resolved and mystery explained), Land of Dreams celebrates the wonder of the journey itself rather than in the rushing toward denouement. His inimitable prose style and (what some might perceive as) eccentric sensibility create an atmosphere of enchantment totally unique to Blaylock.

Few contemporary Fantasy novels merit more than one reading--like a magician's trick revealed, a punchline delivered, there is little to draw the reader back for a return visit--but Land of Dreams possesses something quite rare: a magic that stays (to which I can attest, having read this novel several times over the years), Blaylock's artistry undiminished over successive reads (it's really that good).