Peter Allen David (1956–2025)

It's been a long wait for the fourth Sir Apropos of Nothing book, and an even longer wait for me since by the time it came out last summer I was already neck-deep in Notable Books contenders. For the most part, I'd say that Pyramid Schemes stands well on its own, with only passing references to Apropos's earlier adventures, but the last act of the book will be best appreciated by those who started at the beginning.

After having wandered the world for longer than he ever expected to be alive, show more Apropos, now probably around forty years old by his best estimation, has arrived in the country of Rogyt. There, due to his ignorance of the law declaring that all first born sons of an enslaved race called the Shews must be killed at birth, he accidentally brings about the death of the boy destined to free them. Their god then appears to him in the desert and declares that Apropos must find a way to set them free instead. Aside from the Exodus, the tale that follows brings in elements of Ben Hur, the curse of the Mummy, the story of Cleopatra, and more.

In some ways, Apropos suffers from the same difficulty as Harry Flashman does: having declared himself a coward and a scoundrel, he does tend to spend an unusual amount of time doing heroic things. However, I think that the end result for Apropos works out better. Unlike Flashman, at his heart, Apropos really does care about other people. He may expect that he will let them down eventually, and his inclination to risk his own skin more than he has to for them may not go very far, but he doesn't want to abandon or disappoint them. It's just that he's as much of a skeptic about himself as about the rest of the world. He has believably matured through the years, which is necessary to make the reader accept the end of his story. If this is the end of his story. It's certainly the beginning of a new chapter in Apropos's life, but whether it's the end of his published "memoirs" or merely the set-up for the next installment is not apparent. Considering how long it took before David was able to get the rights back and publish even one more Apropos book for us, I don't know how high my hopes should be, but if there is more coming I'll be ordering as soon as the paperback's available. show less

It reminded me a little of Patrick Rothfuss’s The Wise Man’s Fear, but only in terms of story structure. It is essentially a bildungsroman from rags to riches back to rags again. Or you could interpret it as a knight’s adventure that breaks some tropes along the way (i.e., the story starts with the protagonist fending off the knight whose wife he just slept with). Then it goes back to before the main character was even born and goes from there. Like the editor said the beginning of the show more book isn’t exciting enough, so there’s just a flash-forward teaser. But it feels more like a bait-and-switch.

Other than that, it is a very good book, in the Peter David style. But it’s a lot more satirical and cynical and snarky than you’d get from something licensed like Star Trek or Marvel. And it’s very long. This is a deconstruction of chivalric knight tropes with themes around the destiny of a hero. This is not a good guy. I don’t mean like a thief, like Kaz Brekker in Six of Crows, but kinda selfish, self-serving. Like a heel wrestler. So if you’re into that, this is the book for you. But you may want to avoid this if you’re having a day where you need to see the good guys win.

But be careful–it has some problematic stuff. For example, our main character is born of rape. This is played for backstory and drama. His mother is a slut, then a whore, then an even worse whore. She prostitutes while pregnant with the main character and afterwards, while raising him. This was written in 2001–I’m surprised the publisher wasn’t more sensitive about topics like this. I didn’t think Peter David was capable of this kind of misogyny (and I’m not saying he’s a misogynist, but this book is not kind to females). show less

Picard has never been delighted when Q makes an appearance. When Q arrives with Trelane, another member of the Q Continuum, in tow and asks for Picard's help, Picard is even less enthused. But when Trelane taps into the chaotic heart of the multiverse and attempts to collapse three alternate timelines into one, Picard may be the only one who can intervene.

I'm pleased to say that this novel that I loved greatly in my tweens holds up well for this adult reader. Of course, it includes one of my show more favourite timey-wimey plots with alternate timelines. Plenty of what ifs for all of the main characters in the TNG universe are offered up, which makes for great fun. Plus lots of Q being Q. If you're a Star Trek: TNG fan and you like Q, this one is worth a look. show less

In a retread of The Last Starfighter, Christopher Jarvis was just a teenager playing laser tag at his local Photon game center when his mad skillz brought him to the notice of a galactic police force -- the Photon Warriors -- that recruited him to fight the dastardly minions working under the ultra-evil Warlord of Arr.

But this volume breezes past that origin and throws us directly into an adventure with Bhodi Li -- Jarvis' Photon Warrior codename -- and two of his teammates as they have to show more stop a time-traveling plot to recruit Adolf Hitler as the Warlord of Arr's newest minion.

Yeah, it's that cheesy.

So Bhodi runs around 1940s Berlin trying to track down Arr lackeys Mandarr, Pirarr, and Destructarr (Warriarr, Dogarr, and Bugarr couldn't make it) before they can change history and level up Hitlarr. He just needs to use his Photon laser gun to hit their chest plates and send them back to the future.

Oh, Bhodi also discovers the Holocaust and tries to fit a fix for that into his busy schedule.

I bought this book and the rest of the series about twenty-five years ago when I found out the author name "David Peters" was a pseudonym of Peter David, one of my favorite comic book writers, but I never got around to actually reading them. But when my hand touched them as part of an indexing project I'm doing, I remembered that David died earlier this year and was prompted to finally give them a go.

It's easy to tell that David wrote this, his humor and style are everywhere, which is the only reason I'm going to keep on reading even though this is pretty obviously hackwork for a laser tag company that was riding a wave of success in 1987 and was trying to cash in before it all went away, which happened just a couple of years later. It is very much of it's time, with clashing groups of good and evil akin to He-Man and friends vs. Skeletor's forces or G.I. Joe vs. Cobra.

It ain't good, but that rarely stops me when it comes to my reading choices. show less