Toward the end of 2020 we got the 10th volume of the Vic Challenger series by Jerry Gill, titled Enemies & Tall Tales.
Set in the 1920s, this New Pulp series stars young Victoria Custer who discovers she is the reincarnation of a cave girl, Nat-ul, who lived 100,000 years ago. The character actually comes from Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ The Eternal Lover (later renamed The Eternal Savage), and this series seems aimed at a younger reader, which is fine.
Using the name “Vic Challenger,” she works as a travel writer (and adventurer) while looking for her soul mate from 100,000 years ago, whom she thinks is also reincarnated. But in her travels, she gets into various dangers, and the experience in her past life as a cave girl warrior helps her out. This is important because in this series, Vic and her friends always come up against both bad guys and dangerous cryptids.
Now, if you’ve read this series, you hopefully know that Victoria Custer has a brother, Barney, who stared in Burroughs’ The Mad King, a “Ruritanian” story (think The Prisoner of Zenda). It’s set in the small eastern European nation of Lutha, located between Austria and Serbia, and is where Barney & Vic’s mother (who was a princess) is from.
Barney winds up becoming the king and marrying a princess, though it’s not clear if it is as Barney or his look-alike, King Leopold (the “mad king” of the title), whom Barney disguised himself as and who was killed in the novel.
This is all important, as this story, set just after the last one, starts off with Barney and his wife, Emma, fleeing Lutha, which has been invaded by their larger neighbors. Someone is trying to kill them as they are the last king and queen, and probably hoping to forcestall any kind of rebellion. Thankfully, O — who heads the mysterious government agency that has helped Vic in the past and has her involved in some missions — gets them out and home to Nebraska, where Vic meets up with them.
But they are still in danger, and after being attacked, they flee to a new location. Vic is along for the ride that takes them first to D.C. and then to England. But due to an issue, they land in France to refuel, where Vic will leave them. But things go awry when Vic is grabbed by the bad guys who pursue in another plane as they head south. Far south.
Over the Congo, the plane with Vic crashes and leaves her stranded with few supplies. But she is a survivor. However, like all these stories, there will be dangers both from humans as well as from cryptids. And the Congo is known for one particular cryptid, the Mokele-mbembe. This time she gets some unexpected help from an American hunter and his son. You’ll have to read to find out what she encounters, and how she deals with them.
When she gets back to civilization, it appears that Barney’s plane has crashed. Is he dead? And who were those after him and his wife? Vic thus has a new mission, to find out who they where. O also hinted at information for her, so will be interesting to see if this is addressed in the next book (or two) along with the on-going search for Nu.
Now while this series has been overall pretty good, there are some negatives. Many of these issues are due to it being pretty much self-published. I see issues with the text where sentences just don’t read right. There are also problems with formatting, where a line of text ends too soon or text not lining up and the like.
I had noted the issues with the cover artwork, which has been changed several times over the course of the series. Artwork is expensive, so making these changes has to have an impact. The most recent set is nice, but the cover artwork on #10 seems out of focus.
I also see that the whole series is now available in hardcover, and it seems these have a different set of cover artwork from the paperbacks. Sadly, if what I see on Amazon is correct, this cover art is very dark, which I think is a mistake for stories aimed at younger readers. They need to be bright and colorful, more like the second set or the current set.
Hopefully these issues can be addressed so they won’t affect the sales. This is a good series, and folks should check it out.
