Steven Sidor

Fans of Indiana Jones may find this a solid read. It has an archeologist, an Egyptian digging site, mummies, and curses. Romulus Hardy, the story's archeologist/protagonist, is an odd character that I had trouble warming up to. His character flaws and ways of speaking and thinking were less than endearing, making him too flawed in the hero/leading man department. The other members of this supernatural story (Rex McTroy, Evangeline Waterston, and Yong Wu) are each well-developed characters with unique backstories that I grew to care about.
Hardy is hired by Evangeline's wealthy father to bring an Egyptian mummy back to the States. Hardy achieves the first part of the assignment, but the mummy is stolen by zombies-like creatures who are bent on returning the mummy to life. At that point, it's up to Hardy and his crew to try and keep that from happening and finish the job he was hired to do. Along the way, some decent plot twists kept me reading what bordered on a somewhat plodding novel.
The ending was just satisfying enough to encourage me to read the second book in the series.… (altro)

Within the larger franchise of Arkham Horror fiction, S. A. Sidor's novels have established their own serial continuity, starting with The Last Ritual and developing in Cult of the Spider Queen. Daniel Strange's cover art of this third installment Lair of the Crystal Fang shows three characters from the second book: Maude Brion, Jake Williams, and Andy Van Nortwick. These three are reunited in this tale, but they are not its only heroes. Returning the setting to Arkham allows Sidor to bring in a surfeit of other "investigators" from the Arkham Horror games. Urchin Wendy Adams, mayor Charlie Kane, and psychologist Carolyn Fern are also central to the story, and reporter Rex Murphy and researcher Mandy Thompson have important roles. Sidor seems to have realized that each such character appearing is a selling point in a piece of literature like this one.

A more general concept that this novel seems to have carried over from the Arkham Horror card game is the basic emphasis on trauma. Jake's physical trauma from the South American adventure of the previous book includes what would be a Weakness card in the game: Leg Injury. Maude is definitely suffering from mental trauma.

Stylistically, this volume was a bit inferior to its predecessors. "Unpindownable" (50) would be all right in contemporary 21st-century humor, but it's a clinker in pulp era horror. I was similarly put off by "torpefy" (131) and several other word choices and phrasings in the course of the book. As before, Sidor managed to strike a mid-point between weird horror and pulp action that is consistent with the mood of the games (as contrasted with Yog-Sothothery more generally).

The Lair of the Crystal Fang plot centers on the Arkham sewers, and it features a serial killer, witches, and gangsters. It moves along at a brisk pace with short chapters and frequent changes of focus. I wasn't blown away by anything here, but it was an adequate addition to this now-sprawling set of game-based horror books.… (altro)

I received a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
During a modernization of Arkaham’s sewers, a discovery is found: a large pink crystal fang. Now the mayor has to figure out how to restart the infrastructure project that he has hanged his re-election campaign on. A set of comrades recovering from the trauma from their previous adventure are being dragged into the mystery due to a series of bizarre coincidences. Stalking them all is a serial killer who calls himself the Lamprey, and he has a monstrous goal behind his brutal murders.
This story is pure pulp and I love it. It reads like a story you could have found in an old pulp magazine from the 1920s or 1930s. The style is spot on. The characters are adventurers with mysterious histories. The bizarre is rarely explained and there’s always a sense of the unknown. I found myself wanting to read just one more chapter to find the answer to what exactly is happening.
However, it does start rather slowly. It takes a bit for the main protagonists to arrive on the page and even longer for the storylines to converge. Even by the end, one of the storylines feels only tangentially related to the overarching plot surrounding the crystal fang. Yet, this didn’t detract from the story. Instead, it helped make the world of Arkham feel more fleshed out.
Also, as a fan of the board game, I appreciated all the Easter Eggs in it. The board game could serve as a map to this book. It was fun just finding all the references and I’ll have to go back over it again to see what I missed.
Definitely a must-read for anyone who loves the game Arkham Horror. I would also recommend it to anyone who loves pulp novels or Lovecraft-inspired novels without all the problematic elements. It was a great October read.… (altro)