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A review by tobin_elliott
The Thousand-Headed Man: A Doc Savage Adventure by Lester Dent, Lester Dent
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
2.5
This is an interesting one, because this shows both an interesting side to the Doc Savage stories, as well as showing exactly how racist they could get.
Now, I have to bear in mind that this book is 91 years old, originally published in the completely different world of pre-WW II America, 1934. So, the Asian stereotypes presented here...from the "velly sorry" and "chop chop" dialogue, to the casually tossed out references to "slant" eyes, to the weirdly described yellow skin tone "akin to an egg yolk" are absolutely awful to me. I cringed throughout the entire book. So...yeah, that hasn't aged well.
Yet, on the other hand—and I am in no way trying to imply that this makes up for the stuff mentioned above—this book does something I don't think I've read in a Doc Savage book up to now...Doc is actually surprised and debilitated on a couple of occasions. The guy who is always thinking ahead, who could see 20 moves ahead, like Bobby Fischer, was caught off-guard a couple of times. Gotta say, that was a pleasant surprise.
The other, more refreshing aspect was the fact that this adventure had a young, beautiful female...who did NOT fall head over heels for Doc, and moon over him throughout the entire story.
So, while it had some horrible negatives, it held a couple of surprising positives, as well. Let's hope, in the hundreds of adventures to follow, there's less of the former and more of the latter.
Now, I have to bear in mind that this book is 91 years old, originally published in the completely different world of pre-WW II America, 1934. So, the Asian stereotypes presented here...from the "velly sorry" and "chop chop" dialogue, to the casually tossed out references to "slant" eyes, to the weirdly described yellow skin tone "akin to an egg yolk" are absolutely awful to me. I cringed throughout the entire book. So...yeah, that hasn't aged well.
Yet, on the other hand—and I am in no way trying to imply that this makes up for the stuff mentioned above—this book does something I don't think I've read in a Doc Savage book up to now...Doc is actually surprised and debilitated on a couple of occasions. The guy who is always thinking ahead, who could see 20 moves ahead, like Bobby Fischer, was caught off-guard a couple of times. Gotta say, that was a pleasant surprise.
The other, more refreshing aspect was the fact that this adventure had a young, beautiful female...who did NOT fall head over heels for Doc, and moon over him throughout the entire story.
So, while it had some horrible negatives, it held a couple of surprising positives, as well. Let's hope, in the hundreds of adventures to follow, there's less of the former and more of the latter.