LADY ACTION – The Sands of Forever

By Ron Fortier

Airship 27 Productions

91 pages

Guest Reviewer – Bob Deis

Ron Fortier has a long and distinguished career as a writer for comics. I’ve been a fan of his work in that realm for years, especially his contributions to the Green Hornet and Terminator series published by NOW Comics. In 2006, Fortier created his own publishing company called Airship 27. At that point, he became a pioneer in publishing “new pulp” novels and story anthologies that are inspired by both classic comics and old pulp magazines.

THE SANDS OF FOREVER is a short novel that has genes from both realms. It features the character Nicola Sinclair, a beautiful, butt-kicking international spy code-named “Lady Action.” Although she comes from the popular Captain Action comics series, you don’t really need to know anything about that series to understand and enjoy THE SANDS OF FOREVER. It’s a self-contained action/adventure romp that takes Nicola to Libya to find another agent who has gone missing. He was searching for the mysterious “Tree of Life” mentioned in the Bible, which was said to have tremendous powers and be hidden somewhere in the Libyan Desert.

The search-and-rescue mission soon turns into a fight for survival. A local, colorfully-evil Arab sheik has also heard of the magical tree and wants it for himself. This leads to a series of bloody fights between Nicola and the sheik’s henchman, a wild car chase through the streets of Tripoli, a race across the desert and a final confrontation in an ancient underground maze of tunnels full of deadly giant scorpions. It’s a fun read with a quick-paced, cinematic style: kind of a novelistic mashup of Lara Croft, Indiana Jones and James Bond with its own unique characters and flavor. I enjoyed it and look forward to reading future Lady Action novels by Fortier.