Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: North-West Romances, Summer 1941

Nothing like a Norman Saunders cover on an issue of NORTH-WEST ROMANCES. The two go together perfectly. This issue features a story by one of my favorite authors, Frederick Nebel (a reprint from a 1932 issue of ACTION STORIES), as well as yarns by William Byron Mowery, Ralph R. Perry, Owen Finbar (who was really A. DeHerries Smith, who wrote a lot of stories for the Northerns under his own name), Dan O'Rourke (who was also A. DeHerries Smith), Reg Dinsmore, Evan M. Post, and house-name John Starr (quite possibly A. DeHerries Smith, too). I love Northerns and ought to read more of them.

Review: American Treasure Hunters: The Hunt for Confederate Gold

I’ve written here before about how much I enjoyed the boy’s adventure series I read as a kid, especially Rick Brant, the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift Jr., and the Three Investigators. As far as I know, that sort of series hasn’t existed for a long time. Until now.

THE HUNT FOR CONFEDERATE GOLD is the first book in a new series called AMERICAN TREASURE HUNTERS, written by Andrew M. Dare and published by Ark Press. The publisher’s website does a better job of summarizing it than I can, so I’m going to quote it:

“Ben Prescott, Porter Rockwell, and Latch McRae couldn’t be more different. Ben is a home-schooled brainiac. Porter is the starting quarterback for the Ridgeport Raiders, and Latch is a grease-smudged prodigy who never saw an engine he couldn’t take apart and set to purring. Yet the three have been friends forever, drawn together by a shared passion: treasure hunting for the forgotten loot of American history. 

During a raucous Fourth of July fireworks battle, the trio stumbles onto a lost Confederate blockade-runner. Locked inside: a rusted safe, a sealed pouch, and the first breadcrumb to a vanished fortune in Confederate government gold, missing since the final days of the War Between the States. 

They’re not alone. A bitter ex-employee of Ben’s father and a well-funded outsider are willing to lie, steal, and threaten to take the treasury for themselves, and wipe out the story of its origin. 

Now the hunters must face danger and work their way through knotty clues and ciphers as they seek a long-lost map drawn in invisible ink on the back of a letter from General Robert E. Lee himself! It’s a map that may point to one of America’s richest lost treasures.”

My reaction to reading this book is pretty simple. If I’d read it when I was 13 years old, I would have thought it’s one of the greatest books ever written. From the perspective of being 60 years on down the road from that point, I still thoroughly enjoyed it and think it’s an excellent yarn. Ben, Porter, and Latch are fine protagonists, and the story moves along at a fast pace through a well-constructed historical mystery.

Of the vintage series I mentioned above, the one I’m most reminded of by THE HUNT FOR CONFEDERATE GOLD is the great Rick Brant series. Like Rick and Scotty in those books, the heroes of this series are old enough and athletic enough to take care of themselves in the action scenes, and there are a few hints of espionage and intrigue, the way Rick and Scotty used to find themselves helping out JANIG, the Joint Army Navy Intelligence Group (that’s right, I remember what the initials stand for after 60 years). The emphasis in this series is more on history than on science, but you get the same mixture of educational stuff with action, mystery, a little romance (that angle is handled quite well), and a little humor.

I enjoyed this book a lot and look forward to the others in the series. It’s available on Amazon in e-book and hardcover editions, or you can get it directly from the publisher’s website here. If you’re looking for a book a teenage boy would find entertaining, or you’re an old geezer revisiting your own reading as a kid, I highly recommend it. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Oriental Stories, Winter 1932

A classic cover by J. Allen St. John graces this issue of the legendary adventure pulp ORIENTAL STORIES. And speaking of classics, this issue contains the story "The Sowers of the Thunder" by Robert E. Howard, a poem by REH, a collaboration between Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price, and stories by Warren Hastings Miller, S.B.H. Hurst, G.G. Pendarves, and the lesser known James W. Bennett, H.E.W. Gay, Grace Keon, and Lt. Edgar Gardiner. I have some reprinted issues of ORIENTAL STORIES, and of course I've read quite a few stories, by REH and others, that appeared there originally, but I don't think I've ever seen a copy of an actual issue, or of its successor, THE MAGIC CARPET. But that's okay. This whole issue is available on the Internet Archive if I ever decide to read it. I know I ought to, but there are just so many pulps and so little time . . .

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Adventures, March 1939

Pith helmet alert! I think the cover on this issue of THRILLING ADVENTURES may be by Richard Lyon, who did a lot of them for various Thrilling Group pulps in the Thirties. It's a striking cover, that's for sure. An oddity about this issue is that all the authors except one are best remembered for their Westerns: Philip Ketchum, Edward Parrish Ware, Rolland Lynch, Ben Conlon, and Harold F. Cruickshank. The one author who wasn't a prolific contributor to the Western pulps, Ray Millholland, is the only one who appears to have written a traditional Western yarn in this issue. I say "appears to" because I'm just basing that on the story titles. I don't have this issue and haven't read it. The Cruickshank story is kind of a Western, since it's an animal story and part of a series about a white wolf. I really ought to read more stories from THRILLING ADVENTURES. Most of the issues look great!

Review: Rex Brandon #1: Death Warriors - Denis Hughes

Sometimes I’m just in the mood for a jungle adventure. In 1951 and ’52, British author Denis Hughes wrote twelve novels under the pseudonym Marco Garon about Rex Brandon, a two-fisted geologist, explorer, and big game hunter, and his adventures in Africa. These were published by a British paperback publisher, and these days, the first six in the series are available as paperbacks and e-books from Bold Venture Press. They’ve been sitting on my Kindle for quite a while, so I figured it was time I read one of them.

The first book in the series, DEATH WARRIORS, finds Rex acting as an agent for the British and French governments. (I assume Rex is British, but you know, I’m not sure it ever says that in the book.) It seems that several years earlier, a geologist named Georg Traski located a deposit of a rare ore called irikum, which is more valuable for making nuclear weapons than uranium. But Traski disappeared somewhere in the jungle, and an expedition sent to look for him, led by another geologist and his beautiful daughter, never came back, either. Now Rex is going in to this dangerous area to locate the irikum deposit and find out what happened to the previous expeditions.

Well, you know with a set up like that, there are going to be plenty of adventures with wild animals (leopards, lions, and a rogue gorilla with an ear for music, in this case), despicable villains, and a madman or two. And so there is. Does it all play out about the way you’d expect? Sure it does. Is getting to all the expected destinations fun? You bet! DEATH WARRIORS has a lot of action, a stalwart protagonist in Rex Brandon, a couple of colorful sidekicks, and a beautiful, competent young woman. All the ingredients for a very entertaining jungle adventure yarn in the grand tradition. If you’re a fan of such things, like I am, I give it a high recommendation, and I look forward to reading the other Rex Brandon novels that are available.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, February 1936

I don't know who painted the cover on this issue of TOP-NOTCH -- Tom Lovell, maybe? -- but it's pretty dramatic. TOP-NOTCH was getting near the end of its long run by this point but was still publishing some very good authors. In this issue are stories by Arthur J. Burks, Major George Fielding-Eliot, William Merriam Rouse, Samuel Taylor, and Robert H. Leitfred. The other authors aren't familiar to me: Paul Randell Morrison, Edmund du Perrier, Hal Firanze, and Kurt von Rachen. Wait a minute, Kurt von Rachen was L. Ron Hubbard, so I guess I've heard of him after all. Controversial though he may be, I like Hubbard's pulp stories for the most part, and for all I know, those other guys were fine writers. So this is probably a decent issue. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure, December 1, 1932

I've been quite a fan of Hubert Rogers' pulp covers. Here's another very good one on this issue of ADVENTURE. There's a fine lineup of authors inside, too, including Walt Coburn, Gordon Young, William MacLeod Raine, Lawrence G. Blochman, Paul Annixter, and Ared White. If you'd like to check out this issue for yourself, you can find it on the Internet Archive.  

Review: Fair Blows the Wind - Louis L'Amour

I argued back and forth with myself quite a bit before I wrote this review. But I’ll get to that. Also, there are some minor spoilers scattered throughout this post, but no more than you find in a lot of book reviews.

First of all, look at this opening line: “My name is Tatton Chantry and unless the gods are kind to rogues, I shall die within minutes.” Isn’t that great? With an opening line like that, how can you not want to keep reading?

It’s the late 16th Century as this novel opens, and our narrator/protagonist Tatton Chantry (not actually his real name, as author Louis L’Amour alludes to often) is an Irishman who has already lived an adventurous life. He has traveled to the New World on an English trading vessel and is marooned on what will someday be the Carolina coast when Indians attack a shore party. While escaping from the Indians, he runs into a group of Spaniards and Peruvians who were also stranded there when their ship began to sink. Chantry suspects treachery from the Spaniards, falls in love with a beautiful Peruvian aristocrat, and meets another castaway who has been living on these barrier islands for a couple of years.

All this leads up to a long flashback that takes up about two-thirds of the book and tells us about Chantry’s life as a fugitive in England and Scotland (his father in Ireland was murdered, and the family estate was destroyed), his various meetings with various scoundrels, gypsies, friends, and enemies, and his efforts to make himself into a master swordsman. Eventually he becomes a successful trader and even a published author of novels, poems, and plays. Then he’s a mercenary soldier and fights in various wars all over Europe before circumstances finally take him to America and we’re back where we started. It’s a busy life.

Now we get to the arguing with myself part. I always feel like when a Western writer says anything negative about Louis L’Amour, there’s a perception of sour grapes. Sometimes it’s more than just a perception, although I honestly don’t think that’s true in this case. But I finally decided to forge ahead with it anyway.

The framing sequence in this book that’s set in the New World is terrific. By itself, it would have made a fine short novel. Tatton Chantry is a tough, likable protagonist and you can’t help but root for him. The flashback is a different story, no pun intended. There are some wonderful scenes in it, but a lot of it just goes on and on and serves very little function. Again and again, L’Amour sets up some plot twist or new storyline, and then totally ignores it for the rest of the book, leaving things unexplained. What’s Chantry’s real name? Why is his life in danger if he ever returns to Ireland? Who’s that mysterious woman? What about the guy who keeps popping up to pull his chestnuts out of the fire? Who’s he? We don’t know. L’Amour never tells us.

There are also numerous continuity glitches of the sort he was notorious for. Chantry has a bag of gold, then he loses it, then he has it again with no explanation. It’s day, then it’s night, then it’s day again, all while one scene is going on. L’Amour said he never revised his work, never even looked at it again after he wrote the first draft. Mistakes like that certainly seem to indicate he was telling the truth.

At the same time, the settings are rendered beautifully, the dialogue is always good, and the ending of this one is great. L’Amour doesn’t hold back on the epic showdown between Chantry and his longtime mortal enemy, and it’s very satisfying.

So my overall opinion of FAIR BLOWS THE WIND is about as mixed as you can get. It’s one of several books from late in L’Amour’s career I never got around to reading, and I’m glad I finally did. It’s mostly entertaining and kept me turning the pages, but it’s also a prime example of the things about his writing that bother me. I suspect that mileage may vary a lot from reader to reader on this one. Like all of L’Amour’s work, it’s been reprinted numerous times and is available in just about any format you can think of. The image above just happens to be the paperback edition I read.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Adventure Yarns, December 1938

This is the second and final issue of a very short-lived adventure pulp from Columbia Publications, edited by Abner J. Sundell who edited most of Columbia's pulps that weren't edited by Robert W. Lowndes. The cover on this issue of ADVENTURE YARNS is by A. Leslie Ross, and a quite adventurous one it is. There's a strong lineup of authors in this issue, as well: Eugene Cunningham, Will F. Jenkins (twice, once under his name and another story as by his famous pseudonym Murray Leinster), Armand Brigaud, L. Ron Hubbard (controversial now but a popular and prolific pulpster then), house-names Cliff Campbell (Sundell, in this case, according to the Fictionmags Index) and James Rourke, along with lesser-known writers Stephen Cumberland, Frank Couch, and Kenneth P. Wood. When a pulp runs for only a very few issues like this, I always wonder if it was never intended to last but was just a way of burning off inventory. I don't know if that's true in this case, but it certainly seems possible.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch Magazine, July 1, 1928

Well, that cover makes me nervous just looking at it. I don't know who painted it. There's a signature in the lower right corner, but my eyes aren't good enough to make it out. I think it's safe to say that the most well-known author in this issue of TOP-NOTCH is Erle Stanley Gardner with a story in his Speed Dash series. I haven't read any of these and don't really know anything about the character. Burt L. Standish, the author of the Frank Merriwell series, is also on hand, but he's pretty much forgotten these days, I would think. Other than that, we have George E. Powers, Seaburn Brown, Vic Whitman, Ruland V.E. Waltner, Reg Dinsmore, Harold Bradley Say, George Commodore Shinn, and William Wallace Whitelock, and I don't know a blessed thing about any of them.

Review: The Lotus and the Dragon - Brent Towns

Brent Towns has been highly successful writing Westerns, men’s adventure novels, hardboiled private detective yarns, and World War II action tales. Now he’s moving into yet another genre, the epic historical adventure novel, with his latest release, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON.

Taking place in Australia in the 1870s and ’80s, THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is narrated by Jack Crowe, a tough, hardbitten protagonist who starts out as a bounty hunter. After being unjustly convicted of a crime, he’s sent to an isolated sheep station to work off his sentence. When that is finally behind him, he starts a freight business, only to run afoul of violence and tragedy again and start a vendetta against a renegade police officer that will last for years.

The rather episodic plot of this novel follows Jack through stretches involving mining, riverboating, and romances with several beautiful women who may or may not be trustworthy. Encounters with various enemies result in him being beaten up, shot, nearly drowned, and left for dead more than once. Those enemies include not only corrupt policemen and politicians but also bushrangers, whoremongers, slavers, and an American business tycoon who ruthlessly takes over the Australian riverboat trade.

THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one tough, gritty book. The action never lets up for long, and Jack Crowe takes enough punishment for several novels but is resilient enough to keep fighting all the way to an ending that’s crying out for a sequel. If you’re a fan of Wilbur Smith and Bernard Cornwell, you really need to check out this novel. It’s the same sort of epic, sweeping adventure and is very well-done. THE LOTUS AND THE DRAGON is one of the best books I’ve read this year, and I give it a high recommendation. It's available from Wolfpack Publishing on Amazon in e-book and paperback editions.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, June 16, 1934

As I've said before, mid-Thirties ARGOSY is one of my favorite pulps. It might be my top favorite if not for the abundance of serials. I love the covers by Paul Stahr, though, and you can't beat the assortment of authors. In this issue, you'll find stories by W.C. Tuttle, Theodore Roscoe, F.V.W. Mason, Frank Richardson Pierce, and Eustace L. Adams, top writers, all of them, as well as the lesser-known Sinclair Gluck and Tip Bliss. Never having read anything by Gluck or Bliss, they may top-notch, too, for all I know. The serial installments are by Pierce, Adams, and Mason, so if I were to read this issue (I don't own a copy), I would probably skip those stories, which knocks out a considerable chunk of wordage, but I'm sure I would enjoy the others.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Pirate Stories, May 1935

PIRATE STORIES was a short-lived adventure pulp edited and published by Hugo Gernsback. This is the fourth of only six issues. The cover is by Sidney Reisenberg. Two of the authors inside are prolific and well-respected pulpsters: J. Allan Dunn and Nels Leroy Jorgensen. I hadn't heard of any of the others, who include Norman White Jr., Jack Covington, and Jaques Edouard Durand. This is Durand's only credit in the Fictionmags Index. I wonder if he was really J. Allan Dunn. Nothing to base that on, just a stray thought.

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Sandstorm - James Rollins

Talk about your mixed emotions. I was predisposed to not like this book: it’s too long, and the author is too successful. (Writers are just as prone to sour grapes as anybody else.) On the other hand, James Rollins is a veterinarian in real life, or at least used to be, and seems like a nice guy, so it’s hard to envy him for his success. And he’s admitted in interviews that he’s a big fan of the Doc Savage novels, my all-time favorite pulp series, so in that respect I was predisposed to like the book. The verdict: I liked it. Quite a bit, actually.

It opens with an explosion at the British Museum that destroys a display of Arabian artifacts, but it’s not the terrorist attack you might expect. Instead, it’s a natural occurrence caused by the convergence of an electrical storm and something hidden inside one of the artifacts. This sends a large and varied cast of scientists, explorers, billionaires, and spies racing off to Oman in a quest to find a lost city buried under the sands before the natural catastrophe that’s developing threatens the continued existence of the entire world. Of course there’s action aplenty along the way, as well as a smidgen of soap opera.

I hardly ever even attempt to read a book that’s almost 600 pages long anymore, and when I do I usually make it thirty or forty pages and then decide that I don’t like it well enough to stick with it for the five or six days it’ll take me to read it. Usually there’s nothing really wrong with the book; it just doesn’t compel me to make that investment of time. That never happened with SANDSTORM, though. I was able to stay with it without any problem . . . although it wouldn’t have broken my heart if it had been a hundred pages shorter. Still, there’s a lot of plot in it, and Rollins seems to be very good about planting things that don’t pay off until two or three hundred pages later. He also writes decent action scenes and has good characters. Things get a little far-fetched now and then; Rollins leads the reader right up to the edge of saying, “Oh, come on!”, but doesn’t quite get there. And he winds up with at least semi-plausible scientific explanations for everything.

I liked this one enough so that I’ll certainly read more by Rollins, and if you like big, epic adventure novels, I think his books are worth a try.

(This post originally appeared on June 24, 2008. SANDSTORM is the first novel in James Rollins' Sigma Force series, and despite the good things I say about it, I haven't read any of the others. I own several of them, however, and still intend to get back to the series. Whether I will or not . . . Well, I wouldn't bet a hat on it, but it could happen. SANDSTORM is still available in an e-book edition, but not in print, as far as I can tell.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Speed Adventure Stories, September 1944

This issue of SPEED ADVENTURE STORIES sports a fine cover by H.J. Ward and a pretty strong line-up of authors. Tom W. Blackburn, best remembered as a top-notch Western author, of course, leads things off. I don't own this issue so I don't know if Blackburn's yarn is a Western, but I'm sure it's good regardless. Also on hand are Dale Clark, Stanley Vickers, house-name Clark Nelson, as well as Victor Rousseau with three stories, one each as by V.R. Emanuel (his actual initials and last name), Clive Trent, and Hugh Speer.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top-Notch, April 1935

I've read quite a few stories published originally in Street & Smith's TOP-NOTCH, but never an issue of the pulp itself. I don't own any, as far as I recall, but there are a number of issues available on the Internet Archive. Not this one, though. That cover by William Soare caught my eye, as did the fact that the lead novel is by Thomas Walsh, an old pulpster who was still active and writing for ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE when I was reading EQMM in the Sixties. Also on hand in this issue are Philip Ketchum, William Merriam Rouse, Bob du Soe, Bruce Douglas, and Harold F. Cruickshank. That's a pretty good bunch of writers.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Short Stories, December 25, 1933

That's a nice evocative cover by Frederick Witton, an artist whose work I'm not familiar with, on this issue of SHORT STORIES. It's dated December 25, and Christmas Day was on Monday in 1933 (yes, I looked it up), so the unsold copies of this one were probably pulled off the stands on Tuesday that week. Although who wouldn't want a pulp with stories by H. Bedford-Jones, James B. Hendryx (a Corporal Downey yarn), William Merriam Rouse, George Allan England, Hapsburg Liebe, Clifford Knight, and Berton E. Cook? Well, it was the depths of the depression, after all, so I'm sure there were a lot of people who didn't have a quarter to spare, but enough people kept buying SHORT STORIES to keep it in business for a couple of decades and more after this.

Review: John Standon of Texas - Johnston McCulley

Johnston McCulley is mostly remembered, and rightly so, as the creator of Zorro, but he wrote all sorts of pulp yarns, including a five-part serial called “John Standon of Texas” which appeared in WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE in September and October 1920. It was reprinted in a hardcover of the same title by Chelsea House, Street & Smith’s book publishing arm, in 1924. There was also a British edition from Hutchison in 1934. I have the Chelsea House edition and read it recently. Since my copy is coverless and is just a very plain-looking brown hardcover, I’ve used images I’ve found on-line of both covers.

John Standon, the hero of this one, is an American adventurer who has been prospecting in the mountains of Mexico for several years. As the story opens, he’s on his way back to Texas, having given up on finding gold. Before he can cross the border, though, he finds himself caught up in a revolution as he helps rescue some aristocrats from a gang of bandits led by a self-styled revolutionary who’s really just after loot and power.

Standon’s efforts to help these people escape from the bandits is really all this books amounts to. The plot is very simple. But there’s a ton of action, the characters are colorful and interesting, the bandit leader and his second-in-command, an American gunslinger, are suitably villainous, and McCulley plays out the whole thing in exciting, fast-paced prose. While the style is slightly old-fashioned now and then, for the most part you wouldn’t guess that this novel was written and published more than a hundred years ago.

Also, while it was published originally in WESTERN STORY MAGAZINE and the hardcover edition even says “A Western Story” on the title page, it’s not a traditional Western but rather is set in the early 20th Century. Standon packs an automatic pistol and there are mentions of airplanes. I like this setting and am always glad to come across a story that makes use of it.

My copy also has the names of a couple of previous owners written in it. So I have to thank Howard D. Lindamood of Atkins, Virginia, and Slaylin M. Kittredge, address unknown, for passing along this book until it finally wound up in my hands. Because I really enjoyed JOHN STANDON OF TEXAS. If you’re a Johnston McCulley fan or just enjoy good adventure novels, it’s worth reading.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, August 27, 1938

I'm not a big fan of giant floating head covers, but this one by Emmett Watson isn't bad. Rather atmospheric, in fact. As always with ARGOSY, this issue has some good authors inside: Donald Barr Chidsey, Bennett Foster, Richard Howells Watkins, Howard Rigsby (best remembered for paperbacks written under that name and as by Vechel Howard), and Robert E. Pinkerton, as well as the lesser-known Frances Shelley Wees, C.F. Kearns, and John Randolph Phillips. The stories by Chidsey, Foster, and Wees are serial installments, also common in ARGOSY. "Lost House" by Wees was published in hardcover by Macrae in 1938. "Cut Loose Your Wolf" by Foster was published in hardcover as TURN LOOSE YOUR WOLF by Jefferson House in 1938. I think the original title is better. And Chidsey's "Midas of the Mountains" was only a three-parter, probably closer to a novella than an actual novel, and as far as I know, it's never been reprinted. 

A Rough Edges Rerun Review: Gentlemen of the Road - Michael Chabon

I was prepared to like GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD for a couple of reasons: it looked like the sort of historical adventure novel that I usually enjoy, and I knew that author Michael Chabon has an appreciation of and fondness for genre fiction despite being known as a literary author. And with a couple of quibbles, I did like it, quite a bit.

Despite the fact that he’s working with a historical setting here, rather than a fantasy one, what GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD most resembles are the stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser by Fritz Leiber. Zelikmann and Amram are a couple of traveling adventurers, mercenaries, and con artists. Zelikmann is an angst-ridden Frank with medical training (and in his description he bears a certain resemblance to Robert E. Howard’s Solomon Kane), while Amram is a massive Abyssinian who wields a Viking axe. They find themselves in the Caucasus Mountains near the Caspian Sea, in what would be modern-day Azerbaijan, helping a young nobleman who’s a fugitive from the usurper who murdered the rest of the young man’s family. But of course, not all is as it seems to be, and after a series of picaresque adventures, several massacres, an attempted coup, and encounters with assorted elephants, Zelikmann and Amram finally get everything straightened out satisfactorily.

While I thought this novel was a lot of fun, a couple of things about it bothered me. Chabon’s colorful but long-winded style worked pretty well for the first seventy or eighty pages but began to get a little tiresome after that. If he had cut back on it and picked up the pace just a little, I think I would have enjoyed the book even more. The other thing is a curious lack of action. There are several big battles, but they occur off-screen with Zelikmann and Amram showing up after all the fighting is over. The few action scenes that actually take place are described in such a restrained manner that it’s hard to get excited about them. Maybe reading and rereading Howard for forty years has spoiled me, but in a story like this I want swords to flash, heads to roll, and blood to flow in rivers. But that’s just me, I suppose.

Overall, GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD is pretty entertaining, and if Chabon decides to write another novel with these characters, I wouldn’t hesitate to read it.

(In the 17+ years since this post originally appeared on April 13, 2008, I haven't read anything else by Michael Chabon, and as far as I know, he hasn't written anything else about these characters. I haven't really looked into it, though, so I could be wrong about that. This is one still available in e-book and paperback editions.)