MIA Hunter was better written, but Stony Man had more, and better, action. Stony Man Doctrine has been listed as the first Super Bolan, as well as the first Stony Man. Super Bolan was the closest in time, with Stony Man being continued eight years later.
Next up in the Novelizations and Media Tie-Ins division, a showdown between two titles in the "Media Tie Ins That I Wouldn't Have Expected to See Released in Audiobook and Free at My Library" category. In a stunning upset, I'm going with Dark Shadows. Flash underperformed, where Dark Shadows exactly fulfilled my expectations. That and I know further Flash installments will just be more of "Flash tries to get the Badger Men and Wombat Men to fight Ming, but they don't like each other, and Flash does some kind of gladiator combat".
Mack Bolan, Able Team, and Phoenix Force fight a coalition of gangs, commies, and Islamic fundamentalists seeking to attack America with chemical weapons.
HQ gets a lead, a strike teams shoots the place up, repeat until page count goal. Less characterization than usual with way too many characters. After all the Bolanverse novels I've read, I can name one character, Carl Lyons, the closest to having a personality.
Points for having a shootout at a massive abandoned amusement park in Central Texas. Points off for not have a shootout on an operating ride, and night even a chase up a roller coaster track.
You grew up in an orphanage, knowing nothing about your family. You get a job offer as a governess in a spooky house owned by a family who have been secretly financing your care. A word of advice - if you are going to make out with any of the boys, I suggest you don't look at the hidden portrait in the locked basement.
Not a novelization, but a parallel set of stories to the gothic soap opera. Like the soap opera, the book series never answers the question of Victoria's parentage after being hijacked by time travelling vampires (though a Big Finish audio play does). This installment has a self-contained mystery, but we never find out if she's in love with her probable half-brother and/or nephew.
I've never read a proper gothic romance, but this hits every square of the bingo card I've picked up from Scooby-Doo: stranger at the window, hidden portraits, secret passages, a locked room nobody's allowed in, suicide, madness, etc.
Available in Kindle and paperback from Amazon.
And check your library for an audiobook version
Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov are separated as they crash land on planet Mongo. They do capture/escape routine several times, fighting slavers, mermen, and tiger men in gladiator pits, before running afoul of Ming the Merciless.
Not as much action as I expected, with most of the page count either travelling or talking about travelling. Goulart does a good job of respecting the source material without slipping too far into camp, keeping everything light.
The main issue I had is with the back story. In the original comic strip, like the movie, Ming is attacking Earth with advanced technology, with Flash fighting impossible odds for all humanity. In this series, Flash and company are interplanetary explorers who find Mongo, a primitive backwoods planet. Humanity is far advanced technologically. By the end of the story they could leave Mongo at any time, but stick around to fight Ming just for kicks. This lowers the stakes and takes away most of the emotional drive of the original.
Check your library for the Audiobook on Libby and Hoopla.
I needed this. After countless Zebra paperbacks set in small town America with body counts in the low single digits, a good urban gorefest.
Security guard Shannon is snowed in overnight at her Indianapolis office building during a blizzard. The spirit of a murdered homeless man, Dead Ted, is able to control animate objects in the building with deadly effect, as well as animate the corpses of his victims.
So we get 300+ pages of late night lawyers and cleaning crews being slaughtered by vending machines and the like, then the bodies rising from the dead for further carnage. Shannon faces off against the undead horde, her main weapon being a series of fire extinguishers, which make heads explode when you shove the nozzle in their mouths and fill them up with foam.
Severed body part masturbation, an endless litter of flesh earing demon babies, and a demon headed penis with acid ejaculate. Not particularly well written, with the author purposely hitting some of my buttons (every woman gets her breasts described, the Black characters unable to speak English, etc). It's at its weakest with the scenes of Dead Ted, with way too much time explaining the rules of what he is or isn't able to do. We never get an explanation of what brought him back, aside from hints of demonic power, and that's definitely for the best.
I'm a sucker for horror stories in office buildings, and you could do worse than someone trying to out-do Sam Raimi.
