{"id":8548,"date":"2022-06-09T18:47:13","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T00:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=8548"},"modified":"2022-06-09T18:47:13","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T00:47:13","slug":"stoneface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=8548","title":{"rendered":"Stoneface"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/5124Hzs0N6L.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-8551\" src=\"https:\/\/www.delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/5124Hzs0N6L-191x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"191\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/5124Hzs0N6L-191x300.jpg 191w, https:\/\/delirium.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/06\/5124Hzs0N6L.jpg 319w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 191px) 100vw, 191px\" \/><\/a>What do you say after 34 books in the same series?<\/p>\n<p>I guess the first thing I&#8217;ll say is that I like how they&#8217;ve added some new villains and secondary characters that will maybe pop up again in the future, because it&#8217;s important not to get bogged down and run out of new ideas. (Plus, one of them has cool mutant powers like the main lady character, Krysty Wroth, and it&#8217;s nice to have positive mutations as more often than a one-off, since they sure don&#8217;t skimp on the negative mutations. Thermonuclear radioactivity, what are you gonna do? <em>shrug emoji<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>The second thing I&#8217;ll say is that even though it&#8217;s arguably lazy to set a book a hundred years in the future and then rely on the present as grist for your novel mill, I really do like when we get bigger glimpses into the way the world was when it ended, and this is a big one indeed. What would you say to a mountain full of pre-nuke government officials who have been keeping themselves alive with cryogenics and constant organ transplants? I, for one, can dig it. &#8230;and then there&#8217;s a suspiciously familiar cult, too. It&#8217;s an embarrassment of 20th Century riches, is what.<\/p>\n<p>The third thing I&#8217;ll say is I have a disappointment, particularly because of how often I&#8217;ve been surprised by progressive egalitarianism throughout the series. When you call your book <a title=\"Stoneface by James Axler, at Amazon\" href=\"https:\/\/smile.amazon.com\/Stoneface-Deathlands-James-Axler\/dp\/0373625340\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Stoneface<\/a>, and it is partially set in and around Mount Rushmore, with characters[1] from the indigenous Lakota people, well, I was really hoping they would bring up the Six Grandfathers at all. But that&#8217;s a lot to ask of 1996&#8217;s authors, you know? In a lesser men&#8217;s adventure series, which let&#8217;s be honest is basically all of them on the &#8220;how progressive can this genre be?&#8221; scale, it would never have crossed my mind to be disappointed here.<\/p>\n<p>Counterpoint, though, I really like to hope I would not have read 34 books deep into such an alternative series. Despite what it looks like, I <em>do<\/em> have standards.<\/p>\n<p>[1] one of them even a potential recurring person from my prior mention<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What do you say after 34 books in the same series? I guess the first thing I&#8217;ll say is that I like how they&#8217;ve added some new villains and secondary characters that will maybe pop up again in the future, because it&#8217;s important not to get bogged down and run out of new ideas. (Plus, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1247,1230,430],"class_list":["post-8548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-deathlands","tag-mens-adventure","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8548"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8548\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8552,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8548\/revisions\/8552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}