Sadly, my copy of this book does not have that cover.
I feel like Phillip Jose Farmer is probably the writer who has most informed the things that I’ve read. Many of my favorite books smack of the Wold Newtonian, but all I’ve ever read previously of Farmer’s is
His Apocalyptic Life
I enjoyed that book, but not as much as I’d enjoyed some of the descendants of Jose Farmer’s work (Anno Dracula, Planetary). There is a winking neatness to the Wold Newton family that makes an improbable concept veer into ridiculousness.
The Peerless Peer takes Sherlock Holmes and Watson and crosses their paths with various WWI era characters. Specifically, The Peerless Peer of the title is Lord Greystoke, Tarzan. Farmer weaves a complicated conceit involving the Conan-Doyle story THE PRIORY SCHOOL and Greystoke’s ancestry. I found that to be needlessly confusing and complicated and altogether too much time is spent on it.
The story is much better when they are matching wits against Von Bork from HIS LAST BOW, and encountering the deranged heroes of the new century, perennial favorite The Shadow (hilariously, he keeps surprising Holmes) and a hallucinating pilot whom I assumed was The Spider but was actually G-8 according to the appendix.
I also enjoyed the occasional bawdy joke emerging from Watson’s pen. I laughed out loud at the crack about “older buck having the hardest prong” or whatever it was exactly.
If anyone has any recommendations for where to start with Philip Jose Farmer, please shoot me an e-mail at matt@cthulhudice.com, or leave a comment below.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer
The story is much better when they are matching wits against Von Bork from HIS LAST BOW, and encountering the deranged heroes of the new century, perennial favorite The Shadow (hilariously, he keeps surprising Holmes) and a hallucinating pilot whom I assumed was The Spider but was actually G-8 according to the appendix.
I also enjoyed the occasional bawdy joke emerging from Watson’s pen. I laughed out loud at the crack about “older buck having the hardest prong” or whatever it was exactly.
If anyone has any recommendations for where to start with Philip Jose Farmer, please shoot me an e-mail at matt@cthulhudice.com, or leave a comment below.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Peerless Peer