Book Review

I have been doing some book reviews of what I read over at my other page, but due to the format of that page the book reviews get lost. So I figured on doing them here and linking to them over there. Here it goes:


The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard
Dead In The West by Joe R Lansdale
Book of the Dead and Book of the Dead 2 by Various Authors

I started The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane because I enjoy Howard and loves the new Wandering Star version of his Conan tales. They did the same with this character, Howards original text as published in the 1930's with some notes and variations on the stories from his person letters and diaries. This is akin to finding Shakespeare composition notebook of his plays with cross-outs, revisions and notes. Alas Solomon Kane does not hold up as well as Conan. While the writing style is there, the character was not a full fleshed as Conan and did not have the 'soul' I felt reading the original collection. There was a high point and that was the poetry. Howard wrote several Solomon Kane poems and when reading one can see oneself around a campfire telling this story to young campers complete with accent, long dark shadows, cracking flames and the timely screech of a night owl to put the kids in that up all night with a flashlight mood.

Since I felt Kane was a little slow I decided to take a break from it and throw in some other short stories, the first was Dead In The West. Get this book!!! Wandering priest (ala Kane) in the Old West stumbles upon a town in the midst of an old Indian Curse, zombies, righteousness and Gunfight at the OK Coral. Lansdale is fantastic in this novella and makes me want more, more, more. My library has several Lansdales and I am on my way with reading list in hand.

While on the zombie trail I found 2 old books I had about the living dead. Book of the Dead and Book of the Dead 2: Still Dead. The first was a collection of short stories in the world based on George Romero's Night of the Living Dead. What a great collection: Stephen King, Joe Lansdale, Robert McCammon, Ramsey Campell and other horror writers of the 80's. There are some real gems in here and with my strange relationship with zombies I was thrilled, scared shitless and up most nights.....the 2nd book did not hold up, although a young Dan Simmons contributed (great story I might add), it just felt like wow we made some bucks on that one, let's do it again. Sorry No Soup for you.

Dead In The West: Must Read
Book of the Dead: Leave the light on!!!!
Tales of Solomon Kane: Serious Howard Fans Only
Book of the Dead 2: Bathroom Reader, sorry