After too long, we finally get a new story with The Peregrine, Barry Reese‘s New Pulp hero. Though surprisingly, it’s written by someone else. It looks like we are getting a new series of Peregrine stories written by others: Flights of the Peregrine.
The first one is Legends in the Earth by Glen Held. Unlike other recent Reese Unlimited books, this one has a great cover by Jeffrey Hayes. I hope this will lead to further such covers.
Although the time period isn’t specified, I think it is set in 1936. We are introduced to a new character known as The Ghost. A vigilante killer who takes out those he considers evil. He wanders the U.S., but is strangely contacted by a mysterious force or being who calls himself X. X sends The Ghost on a new mission to stop evil, though he doesn’t know exactly what it is about.
Meanwhile, The Peregrine is with his fiancée Evelyn Gould in his identity as Max Davies. They are in some caves near Atlanta when Evelyn gets accidentally knocked into a bottomless pit. Max jumps to her rescue, in the process discovering a strange hidden room off the pit that contains a “witch’s bottle,” which is used to trap souls. It is broken, and Evelyn cuts herself on it. What does this mean?
They meet with a witchologist at a cemetery about this, and learn that it holds a dangerous being that wants to wipe out humanity. But when they are attacked by this entity, which calls itself X, the witchologist grabs Evelyn and disappears, leaving Max behind. Going after the man, Max runs into The Ghost, who attacked him.
Max does get to the witchologist and learns more about X, the threat it poses, and the witchologist’s role in trapping X. X is an agent of an ancient race of beings who used to control the Earth. They were largely wiped out in the fourth extinction event. The dinosaurs were wiped out in the fifth extinction event. But this race, called the Extant, was able to preserve a small number of themselves deep in the Earth. Now, Max, Evelyn, and The Ghost will travel there and put an end to their threat.
A good part of the book tells of their travels into the hollow earth, which is similar to what was described by Jules Verne. If you pay attention, you’ll understand why. After traveling through the bottomless pit, they travel through dark tunnels, encountering a dangerous group of beings. They soon discover an enormous cavern with an inner sea. They must figure out a way to cross the sea, as well as keep those dangerous creatures off.
After a lot of hardship, they make it across, only to find a bizarre world. Max finds himself in the past with some of his relatives. But he realizes it’s all false, and exposes the strange race behind it. Max, along with Evelyn and The Ghost, learn that this strange race has been in conflict with the dangerous creatures they dealt with before, and that they are coming to wipe out the race. But Max and his associates help them fight them off.
After this, the strange race provides them with some assistance in finding and facing the Extant. They learn more about the Extant and the threat they pose to humanity and all life on Earth. Can they put an end to this threat and return?
Overall, this was a great story. I see elements pulled from Jules Verne and other writers. I would have liked to have learned more about The Ghost, as his origin seems mysterious. I don’t know when we’ll see a further work in this series, but I look forward to it.
We get the Reese Universe timeline, but this book is not included, so I wonder if this is considered canon? Also, they really need to bold the years and titles to make it easier to find things.
There are other works out there from Reese Unlimited. There are already the first five Dark Society books, plus Grimalkin, a new Lazarus Gray novel, with more Strawman and Dark Society books planned. I look forward to these. A second Flights of the Peregrine book just came out, The Last Argonaut, by J.P. Linde.
Continue to Fly Peregrine!!