- by Owen Morton
Sorry it’s taken me so long to get round to writing this second part of the review; it occurred to me after writing Part 1 that instead of writing reviews of stupid books for my website, I should perhaps be writing essays about stupid books for my History degree. Therefore, the last week was taken up with writing my essay, and any evening when I wasn’t doing that, I was either going to see the Manic Street Preachers on tour (Wednesday night) or getting completely wasted (Tuesday and Friday). But now term’s finished and I’ve got absolutely nothing to do until I go back to Nottingham library tomorrow, so I thought I’d come back to the review while I’ve got the time.
Last time, we left the action really hotting up, as Skeletor created an ocean next to Castle Grayskull by damming a river. Setting aside the dubious manner in which he dammed this river (using zero-energy weapons, which – as discussed in Part 1 – would be unlikely in the extreme to do anything), I’m actually rather confused as to why damming a river would create an ocean. I would respectfully submit that damming a river would indeed result in its flooding, but surely the flood would cause only an alternative channel for the water to flow down until it could rejoin the river’s more natural course. It would only create an ocean if there was an awful lot of excess water coming from somewhere, and there’s definitely no reference to that happening.
But anyway. On the next page, He-Man finds out what’s going on, but he is for once rather confused as to what to do about it. His immediate instinct is to get into some kind of vehicle called Battle-Ram, but it doesn’t work, and neither does his ‘power blade’ or Teela’s ‘power sceptre’, whatever these things may be. And for those who have been reading carefully, this would come as no surprise, since Skeletor did say a few pages back that he had the power to stop any mechanical device.
This little episode takes place in the early morning, and over the next few hours, the water rises so it’s over halfway up the walls of Castle Grayskull. There really is a lot of water coming from somewhere, because this could not possibly be just the result of a dammed river. An awful lot of sea monsters have appeared from somewhere as well, presumably at Mer-Man’s bidding (it doesn’t specifically say this, but I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt). I’m also willing to ignore the fact that, given the water is halfway up the walls by now, there should be some water leaking into the castle. The book does state that “Only the jawbridge, held tight by its neutralised mechanism, kept the flood from entering”, but I’m not buying it. Surely a bit of water would have got in by now. There must be a crack in the walls somewhere.
Anyway, He-Man somehow deduces that they must be “in the grip of some kind of power-shield”, though how he knows this is left somewhat unexplained. Teela then suggests getting hold of some weapons which use natural energy rather than mechanical, since those would function even with the power-shield in place. Then Stratos suddenly remembers that he can fly, and flies away to warn everyone at the Palace (well, specifically Man-at-Arms, but he’s useless). To be quite honest, I am astounded that it’s taken Stratos all morning to recall that he’s “Lord of the Air”, as was stated earlier in the book, and that therefore he’s capable of going away to get help. And even if Stratos is this stupid, He-Man and Teela aren’t. One of them by now would have remembered. And while we’re on the subject, where’s the Sorceress? She lives in Castle Grayskull (indeed, if she leaves it, she turns into an eagle) and she can fly, and as far as I can tell, she’s the cleverest person on Eternia. She is also capable of communicating telepathically with Man-at-Arms, as proved in Diamond Ray of Disappearance, and this would rather make her the obvious choice to go to tell him what to do. But anyway. It’s Stratos who goes, and moreover, the book states that “The sun was low in the sky when Stratos spiralled to the ground at the Palace of Eternia”. So it took him all the time from noon until sunset to fly to the Palace from Castle Grayskull? Compare this to the fact that, earlier in the book, “Within minutes, [He-Man] was with his friends at the castle”. So it takes He-Man only minutes to walk to Castle Grayskull (I assume he walked, since Battle-Cat isn’t in the book, so he didn’t ride, and there wasn’t any particular emergency at the time, so he wouldn’t have run), yet Stratos about seven hours to fly? They really should have sent the Sorceress.
Stratos tells Man-at-Arms what’s going on, and Man-at-Arms hits upon the idea of using solar power to counteract the flood. I don’t know why, but Man-at-Arms is portrayed rather differently in this book to how he is in the cartoon. I suspect this is down to sloppy thinking, since the author, John Grant, has already demonstrated his ability to do this (the power projector being dragged from Snake Mountain to the river only to appear on the next page back at Snake Mountain, zero-energy weapons, floods resulting from dams, seven hours for Stratos’ journey but mere minutes for He-Man’s, etc). But anyway, in the cartoon, Man-at-Arms is completely useless. He designs stupid machines that bugger up at the first available opportunity (the robot He-Man in ‘Disappearing Act’, and the locator device in A Trip to Morainia, for example), gets kidnapped every other minute, and generally is more trouble than he’s worth. In this book, however, Man-at-Arms is rather different. He actually thinks up this marvellous idea of using solar power to fight back, and moreover he’s got a whole army of servants called the Nerlins to do all his dirty work for him. To be quite honest, it sounds like Man-at-Arms is a slave driver over these Nerlins, which doesn’t make it seem exactly like Man-at-Arms is worthy of being included in the Heroic Warriors. I mean, keeping slaves doesn’t seem all that Heroic, does it?
Anyway, “All that night, the following day, and well into the next evening” is spent with the Nerlins creating a solar cannon. I won’t go into how they do it, but they do a lot more than you’d think would be possible in just a night and a day. Anyway, by the end of Page 23, the solar cannon is ready and attached to Man-at-Arms’ wind raider, another of those stupid vehicles that the inhabitants of Eternia seem to have in abundance. Under the cover of darkness, the wind raider is flown to Castle Grayskull and the solar cannon is lowered to He-Man and Teela. I will give John Grant credit in that he specifically states that the wind raider remains above the power-shield, because otherwise one could assume that the wind raider was for some reason unaffected by the power-shield. This attention to detail does not excuse the numerous other plot holes, such as why the water rose over halfway up Castle Grayskull’s battlements in only half a day, when in the remaining half day, full night, and entire following day and evening, the water has not risen that much further. Indeed, from looking at the pictures, one could be forgiven for thinking that the water hadn’t risen at all. Sloppy thinking on John Grant’s part again, I would suggest.
Skeletor, meanwhile, is watching from the hills. When the sun comes up, the Heroic Warriors prepare to use their solar cannon. They first shoot it at the water, a bit of which turns into “a cloud of super-heated steam”, but even they realise that to do this is a) going to take a hell of a long time to do all the water, and b) pointless anyway, because the water would only come back down as rain when it cools down enough. They then start shooting solar power at nearby hills, which seems equally pointless, but for some reason does inspire Skeletor to order more power to go into powering the power-shield. (Couldn’t be bothered to think of any synonyms for ‘power’ there.)
The book now states that “The flood waters had now risen so high that the defenders of Castle Grayskull were forced to use swords and spears to repel the grasping tentacles and snapping jaws of the sea creatures.” This would be fine except that a) that’s what they’ve been using all along, given that no other form of weapon works, and b) according to the pictures, the water still hasn’t moved. Anyway, Teela is firing blindly with the solar cannon trying to hit the ice dam. Eventually, she manages it, and the dam melts. The flood waters head off down the valley, knocking over Skeletor’s power projector (which has mysteriously moved back here from Snake Mountain again) as they go. It states that as this happens, “Skeletor raged helplessly”, an emotion which is helpfully portrayed by the illustrator by Skeletor standing on a rock, with no evident dismay upon his face, holding up his left hand in a fist, and still holding a sword looking very much like He-Man’s in his right hand.
Now the power projector is destroyed, the power-shield is broken. The water levels are now back to pretty much normal already, and He-Man finally gets to ride on that Battle-Ram thing he wanted a go on earlier. Teela rides on a golden horse, for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, Skeletor is foregoing his usual activity of buggering off back to Snake Mountain as fast as his legs can carry him in favour of attempting to recover the power projector. I’m rather tempted to wonder why. It’s already been proved useless, since all the goodies have to do is get out the solar cannon again, so quite what Skeletor wants with it, I’m not entirely sure. Mer-Man refuses to help him, on account of that, as he puts it, “The vengeance of the Masters of the Universe is close. And it will be swift and terrible”. This sounds very unlike the behaviour of the goodies as we’ve seen in the cartoon, where they are usually just content with foiling the latest plan and then waiting for the next one; they don’t usually bother with revenge. (For this reason, I’m often tempted to wonder why Skeletor doesn’t just wait till He-Man dies. I mean, it’s going to happen some day, and it’s bound to be before Skeletor dies, because from the looks of him, I would submit that Skeletor’s already dead.)
Anyway, angered by Mer-Man’s refusal, Skeletor tries to shoot him, but fails because He-Man blows up the power projector. Mer-Man buggers off, to the sound of Skeletor shouting insults after him. The book ends with Skeletor finally making it back to Snake Mountain and throwing the tablet, from which he originally got the idea, into a volcanic crater. As he does this, he cries, “So much for the wisdom of the ancient Eternians! … The ancient Eternians were fools!” This gives Teela the perfect opportunity to deliver the moral: “The fools … are not the discoverers of wisdom, but those like Skeletor who try to put it to evil use.”
So there you go. If you ask me, it’s fairly typical of an episode of He-Man except that Man-at-Arms does something useful for a change, and also that there are some frankly inexcusable plot holes, although I suppose that doesn’t make it all that unusual. Though, of course, there is the trademark one question that I really have to ask: since Skeletor seems perfectly capable of watching the goodies on his “powerful video-lens” which he created and I discussed in Part 1, how long would it actually take him to discover that He-Man is really Prince Adam? I mean, come on. If he just watched He-Man for long enough, he’d eventually spot the magical transformation taking place, and then the game would be up, really, wouldn’t it?
Overall, I’ll give this book a 4 out of 10. If it had been an episode, it would have got a lot higher, but since you actually have to be paying attention to read this (it is full of quite difficult words for a Ladybird book, like, for example, ‘sulphurous’, ‘neutralised’ and ‘pulsations’), its appeal is somewhat lessened. I’m not arguing that it’s hard to read, but I am saying it’s not really worth the effort of reading it, whereas watching it on the TV would be a lot less effort and thus more fun.