Air Pirates of Krakatoa (Doc Vandal Adventures) Paperback – April 25, 2017

Africa and the lost civilization of the Eldest Flame they had encountered and defeated was now in their recent past. They had defeated the ancient power and its plane to use zombies...and NAZI zombies at that...to attain its goals had been thrown down. Perhaps the most important thing to come from that struggle was the newest member of their crew, Kehla. But now, life has returned to a semblance of normality. But normal in the life of Doc Vandal can mean many things and the sudden death...murder...of one of Doc's family, sends the crew on a mission to southeast Asia where they must discover and defeat pirates, giant robots, and a conspiracy of that may span entire nations.Book 2 of Dave Robinson's great take on the pulp adventure heroes such as Doc Savage, G-8, and so many others, steps up the action and intensity. The characters that he created and populated his first story with have grown and are finding even more of those traits that make them their own unique contributions to the journey. Robinson also has added a fun piece to the story as he includes short afterwords that discuss the technology, its roots in our science, and the modifications he uses to make it a part of the universe. He also adds a biographical piece about the characters and, in this case, "Who is Vic Frank?" that provides insight and background history to the central characters. In this case, the attention on Vic is doubly warranted as her growth and changes through the pages of this book are some key moments to the story and an part of the diversity of these tales that bring them to life.New readers--- you will feel right at home jumping into this book if its the first of the Doc Vandal stories that you will read. The author does a superb job of providing sufficient background information that will allow you to fully understand the story and any story arc references from the first book...but...go read it...it was pretty cool!!!

This sequel to AGAINST THE ELDEST FLAME makes no sense whatsoever. For example, a nation with the super technology Doc Vandal's enemies deploy here would be out conquering the world, not piddling around in the Dutch East Indies. The only one of Doc's assistants who is given anything to do is Vic, who is clearly the author's favorite character. The novel lacks a convincing villain. The one finally revealed seems to be based on Goldfinger, and suffers the same ultimate fate... snore. Vic is given a hot, multi-talented girlfriend, but the amount of steaming girl-on-girl action is sorely limited by the plot's necessity to put the girls and Doc through intense physical torture. A rebel leader who calls herself The Tigress is about as convincing as a cardboard cutout.The biggest problem is that the typesetting and formatting are, from halfway along in the book until the end, always threatening to turn it into an unreadable shambles. Many sentences have their last half entirely missing, and paragraphing is so totally random that it breaks into sentences and dialog. In many spots it is difficult to follow the conversation between characters because of the lack of indication of when one character finishes speaking and another responds. Considering the entire self-publishing phenomenon, it baffles me that authors are willing to spend much time and effort on a manuscript and then completely ignore the shambles that the clueless attempt to produce a printed book inevitably results in.I will be looking at other Doc Vandal adventures, but this one is a thundering flop.