Ahira's Hangar

The Armageddon Rag is a dark fantasy revolving around rock music from the 1960's. It is filled with lyrics and references from that era...

Sandy Blair is investigating the bizarre and brutal murder of a rock promoter who made millions with the 60's band, the Nazgul. His search leads him back to his own past - and into a nightmare tide of rage, anarchy, and hope. In a desperate journey across America, he finds old friends, old haunts, and the former members of the band. But the pent-up passions of a generation are exploding into deadly reveolution. A new messiah brings the Nazgul back to life, pounding out a mad new song - a song of demonism, mind-control, and the bloody, mind-blowing requiem for a new age.

A writer I very much admire, Stephen Donaldson, has this to say:Quote:Vivid, perceptive, and passionate - The Armageddon Rag is George R. R. Martin's best book so far. (but of course he said that before A Song of Ice and Fire came out...) ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell

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Perhaps I'll come for you myself some night. You ought to see me...my fur is white now, pale as snow,but the stature, the majesty, the power, those have not left me...We are the direwolves, the nightmares who haunt your racial memories, the dark shapes circling endlessly beyond the light of your fires.~George R.R. Martin<i>Edited by: danlo60 at: 11/11/03 10:38 am
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About a chapter in, and the main character is a former reporter turned novelist who has been hired to investigate a ritualistic murder...
Looks like there will be quite a bit about a rock band called the Nazgul, too...
I have already found a great quote, which I will post when I get time in the next few days. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Quote:

Their record collection filled two tall cabinets on either side of the speakers, huge old JVC 100s that had given Sandy years of faithful service. Sharon's cabinet was packed with blues, Broadway show tunes, and even disco, to Sandy's never-ending dismay. "I like to dance," Sharon would say whenever he got on her about it. Sandy's records were all folk and vintage rock. He couldn't abide what had happened to music in the past ten years, and the only albums he bought these days were reissues he needed to replace old favorites worn out by play.
Sandy wasted no time selecting music to suit his mood. There was only one possible choice.
There were five albums, filed between the Mothers of Invention and New Riders of the Purple Sage. He pulled them out and sorted thorugh them. The jackets were as familiar as the features of an old friend, and so too were the titles. The first, Hot Wind out of Mordor, had a kind of Tolkienesque cover, hobbits cringing in the pastel underbrush while volcanoes belched fire in the disctance and the dark riders wheeled above on their scaley winged steeds. Nazgul offered a surreal landscape of red sun and scarlet mist, twisted mountains, and shapes half-living and half-machine, all vivid, fevered, hot. The big double album was shiny black, front, back, and within, without lettering, empty but for the four tiny sets of hot red eyes peering from the lower left-hand corner. There was no title. It had been called the Black Album, in deliberate parody of the Beatles' White Album. Napalm, which followed, showed children in some jungle, crouching, burning, screaming, while oddly distorted jets streaked overhead and vomited fire down on them. It wasn't until you looked closely that you realized the scene was a restatement of the cover for Hot Wind out of Mordor, even as the songs within were answers to the group's earlier, more innocent compositions...though they had never been entirely innocent.
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Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi  at: 12/10/03 10:52 pm
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I am still slowly working my way through this book...I was sick for a couple of weeks and that has really slowed me down...

This book is not for the faint of heart, as it has lots of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll...
Nevertheless, I am finding it to be enjoyable. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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I am finding it a bit hard to identify with the main character from time to time, though. He is very much a product of an era that was before my time (the 1960's)...and I don't know muxh about a lot of the things that matter a lot to him...but I will stick with it. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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Finished this afternoon...of all of the things I have read by Martin, this was probably the hardest for me to get into. Most of his stuff is "timeless"...but this one was definately tied very tightly to a certain time frame and events...and events I don't know very much about on top of it...
If I had to say it came down to a central theme (like honor in ASOIAF or friendship in Fevre Dream) I suppose this one would come down to choices...how do you choose? what do you choose? what if you don't have enough good information to choose? etc. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
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