Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Quick Shots: Dust of the Damned

I was really excited to see this novel announced by my (once) favorite western writer Peter Brandvold. 

His first weird western, Bad Wind Blowing, was one of my favorite reads when I jumped into the genre, and I gave it a glowing review here.  The Lou Prophet series was still running strong with great writing, but was starting to fade a bit as Brandvold was getting more into writing under house names for series like Longarm.  His writing was becoming more just the typical paperback western, but surely something like a weird western would let him write something vibrant and unique. 

So how was the book?  There are… goblins in the west?  The Civil War ended with orcs?  Somehow things are just still humming along?  Something like that.  There was a plot, perhaps, and maybe some characters who were flatter than the Llano Estacado.  I read a few very forgettable chapters, put a bookmark in it, then said I’d get back to it.  That was about eight years ago.  I’ve picked it up occasionally, flipped through, and just couldn’t care enough to got back to it.

To be fair, here's the official description: "A novel about werewolves, ghouls, and cowboys, all fighting for their piece of the American frontier.

The Hell’s Angels are a gang of werewolves who have escaped from Hellsgarde Federal Penitentiary. They were the ones who tore the Confederates into submission at Gettysburg for Lincoln, thus ending the Civil War. Now they’ve headed West—to join the legions of other ghouls . . .

Armed with an arsenal of weapons, the deadliest being Marshal Angel Coffin, notorious ghoulhunter Uriah Zane must stop the hordes of shapeshifting creatures pushing west. Together, Zane and Coffin must stop the werebeasts from attaining final dominion over the earth—with humans as their servants..."

Sounds good, I wonder if we'll get it one day?

I miss those early days when Brandvold’s writing was fresh and it was all still new to me.  The buffalo are gone, the railroad’s come through, and the cat house has turned to a Starbucks.

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