By Derrick Ferguson and Joshua Reynolds
2014, Airship 27
Young Dillon seeks out Jim Anthony, Super Detective, to train him on the ways of Pulp Heroing. Anthony's headquarters are attacked, we get a lengthy flashback, then Anthony and Dillon face off against Sun Koh's quest to reinstate the glory of Atlantis.
The highlight here is the presence of various public domain pulp figures - Dan Fowler is the head of the FBI, Anthony's daughter leads Louis Feuillade's Vampires. Sun Koh was the Nazi Doc Savage, and his team are all German pulp figures.
All of these characters are largely lifeless and interchangeable. Alaska Jim acts like an old prospector, and this is the closest we get to a distinct personality. Other than background details, you could have swapped out Operator #5 or Thunder Jim Wade and barely noticed. Even Dillon felt generic. Some of this may be inherent in genre, given that this is the story of two Doc Savage pastiches facing off. Mostly just led me to wonder how there were so many guys over a century old running around.
I didn't care for the audiobook narration, half the characters had a goofy affectation that I found distracting.
From Amazon https://amzn.to/4dRl7hB
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