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The Beasts of Valhalla (A Mongo Mystery)
by George C. Chesbro
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Dell (1987-10-01)
ISBN: 044010484X
EAN: 9780440104841
Dewy Decimal #: 813.54
Mass Market Paperback
Release Date: 1987-10-01
SKU: MM2345
Condition: Good
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Editorial Reviews
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Product Description
The novel that radically altered the nature of the Mongo series, this book blends a classic detective style with elements of science fiction and fantasy. Chesboro takes readers on a wild roller-coaster ride, using the structure and elements of Wagner's Ring Cycle and Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings."
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Customer Reviews
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wanted to like it
Rating  (1)
Date: 2006-04-19
1 out of 6 customers found this reveiw helpful
The edition I read had great cover art and the premise looked really interesting. However, I found it really hard to get through the book. It was just plain badly written. I read it several years ago and I don't recall examples of what I disliked about it. I finished the book because I had nothing else around to read at the time. Bad enough that I've never had any interest in reading other Mongo books.
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Transcending genres
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-12-22
1 out of 3 customers found this reveiw helpful
This is a very complex Mongo novel, and that's saying something, as all Mongo novels are complex. "The Beasts of Valhalla" has elements of mystery, science fiction, horror, and adneture, but doesn't fit nicely into any of those slots. Mongo is Dr. Robert Fredericksen, a brilliant acrobatic dwarf who has a doctorate in criminology and worked his way through college as a circus star. He and his brother, Garth, who is a New York City detective, go to their teenage nephew's funeral, and are not satisfied with the investigation done by the local sheriff. Their ensuing investigation takes them all over the continent, where they encounter religious communes, a mad scientist with a Messiah complex, a giant, a telepath, and a talking gorilla, among other absurdities. As bizarre as all that sounds, George Chesbro's fluid, fast-paced, detailed story makes it all plausible, given the reader has some ability to suspend disbelief. Mongo is a fascinating character, and this is a great Mongo novel. On the back cover, there is a quote from a "Playboy" review: "Raymond Chandler meets Stephen King through the looking glass." I agree, and the outcome is brilliant and intriguing.
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One Song Is Gentle...The Other is...Death
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-08-29
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
For some reason, I tend to read George Chesbro by accident. My first was An Affair of Sorcerors, which I thought would be a straightforward occult story, and which turned out to be something much more intriguing. In truth, his stories refuse to be easily classified, as one might expect when the hero is a Mongo Frederickson, ex-circus midget, acrobat, and currently a professor of criminology. For all this, Mongo is a tough and shrewd investigator with a knack for getting dragged into mysteries that threaten everyone's peace of mind.
Archangel takes place just after the Valhalla crisis and reveals both Mongo and his brother Garth still having trouble getting their minds around the ramifications of that case. Veil Kendry is a friend of Mongo's who was once a cold-blooded killer - and is now a combination artist and street vigilante. The artist has vanished from his studio leaving Mongo a new painting and $10,000 in cash.
Gradually it becomes clear that Veil has vanished to take action against an old enemy, and has left Mongo with clues spread all over the U.S. and Southeast Asia. Veil was a CIA operative in Viet Nam and Laos during the savage, waning years of that conflict, and what he had seen and done at that time has become a threat to a megalomaniac murderer who will stop at nothing to keep his hands on the lines of power.
In almost no time at all, Mongo has discovered enough to endanger the lives of both him and his brother. Death seems to be treading on their heels, but the more Mongo discovers the more determined he becomes to put a stop to a horror that began 25 years previously.
Chesbro is really at his best in this book. Mongo's determination, Garth's anger as both their hunter and the artist, and the fierce loyalty Veil Kendry seems to command from both his fellow soldiers and the Hmong that he lived with for several years, all this comes to life in a plot which takes one twist after another. From dark beginnings to a shocking ending Chesbro keeps the reader's attention by never letting up. This is a good a starting point as any, although, the events of The Beasts of Valhalla figure in this book enough to making Beasts a better starting point.
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The 4th Mongo novel - a major turning point
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-06-20
4 out of 5 customers found this reveiw helpful
"You into fantasy?"
"You mean sword and sorcery stuff? Not really. I like detective novels. Somebody should write a huge detective saga, like one of those four-volume fantasy mothers."
- Mongo and Zeke (newfangled comp sci colleague)
Although BEASTS is the fourth Mongo novel, it contains significant spoilers for only one of its predecessors, SHADOW OF A BROKEN MAN. While BEASTS can be read first (I did that myself), you'll have more fun reading the two books in sequence. It's more important that BEASTS be read before the novels that follow it, because the events herein having had a profound effect on the characters' lives.
To the best of my recollection, this was my introduction to Mongo Fredrickson. The title caught my attention at the library - I was very interested in mythology - and the initial situation of a couple of young D&D players having been murdered for stumbling across a scenario fully as bizarre as any of their campaigns kept my attention long enough to draw me into the story. (An extremely annoying minor detail is that Chesbro apparently didn't research THE LORD OF THE RINGS much beyond reading THE HOBBIT, while writing Mongo as having read the series.)
Mongo is under considerable stress initially, not only at the loss of his beloved young nephew Tommy to an apparent murder/suicide but at returning for the funeral to the site of his extremely stressful childhood, growing up as a dwarf in Nebraska with an only partially supportive family. After a bit of fence-mending with his sister, Mongo looks into Tommy's death a little to find that matters are not what they seem.
Tommy and his friend Rodney, as two very isolated computer/D&D enthusiasts in the middle of Nebraska, had made friends with a young computer scientist at the neighbouring Volsung Corporation, an agrigenetics outfit that makes arrangements with the local farmers to test new products. The teenagers and the young scientist invented a new game, scoring points by finding real-life counterparts to events and characters from THE LORD OF THE RINGS, until one day Rodney and Tommy wouldn't believe in something Obie claimed to have seen on the job, and demanded that he prove his claim. Soon afterward, the boys were dead, leaving only their journals and computer records behind.
Fortunately (?), an old adversary of Mongo's, the aging sometime-spy Mr. Lippitt, has been assigned as chief of security to the Volsung Corporation as a kind of combined punishment/putting out to pasture assignment. Volsung, unfortunately, is a cover for a set of biological experiments quite unrelated to creating new and improved strains of wheat and not approved by the FDA. Even more unfortunately, humans with some unusual genetic factors - like, say, the Frederickson brothers with Mongo's genes for dwarfism - turn out to be just what the doctor ordered for test subjects, once they manage to survive a somewhat unscientific exposure to some lab materials.
The Loge family, named for the Norse trickster god Loki are introduced in this story. Apparently the mad scientists who slay together stay together; Obie is #1 grandson, while grandpa is a double Nobel laureate and the brightest of the bunch. While Chesbro skimped on his Tolkien research, he seems to have been more thorough in his research into Wagner's RING operas, the Loge family being fanatics on the subject. (Have to be to name a kid Siegfried, let alone Auberich, never mind naming your company after the family name of a Ring character.)
Drive in statistics/content warnings:
- Lost count of the dead bodies.
- No sexual content, except by slander
- Not much kung fu but a lot of violence.
- Multiple mad scientists with funding, including blown-up lab fu, experimental animal fu, Nobel fu, and Wagnerian opera fu. Old man Loge turns out not to have read the Evil Overlord List's advice on how to design illegal labs up to code.
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crossover par excellence
Rating (5)
Date: 2005-05-28
2 out of 2 customers found this reveiw helpful
Perhaps the pinnacle of this enigmatic author's catalog. Mongo feints superiority, explores crossover venues, and supplants most other heroes in his successful attempt to win the west, get the girl of unresolved purpose, and strike a blow for nebulous
passions. Combining fantasy with sci-fi like an aged bottle of scotch, Chesbro clearly makes his mark in this genre gone mad.
A must read from a man of mystery, passionate elongations, and malevolent phone calls.
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