The Vikings 4: Trail of Blood by Neil Langholm

The Vikings 4
Trail of Blood by Neil Langholm (Kenneth Bulmer)
1976, Sphere

Erik Ravenhair returns to the New World to find the settlement gone. His band liberates his people, including his newly born child, and finds that the Irish pirates from a previous installment have joined up with natives hostile to Raga and his people.

A couple of capture/escape sequences and a rushed battle in the lava field of an erupting volcano finish off this series with this weakest entry.

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Elric of Melniboné by Michael Moorcock

Elric of Melniboné
by Michael Moorcock
1972, Hutchinson

An evil tyrant maybe wants to be marginally less evil. His cousin tries to usurp the throne and he gets a magic sword. Feels like a fix-up novel, a collection of short stories, focused on his origins, don't know if the stories later in the chronology were better.

A couple decent action sequences, but mostly visions and prophecies and not much going on. In a couple throwaway lines it manages to be more grimdark than most modern stuff I've read, low bar such as it is.

I'm likely in the minority, but Elric didn't come across as especially goth or rock n roll, certainly not as cool as the covers. He gets weak without his drugs, but it feels more like grandpa needing his heart medication more than Keith Richards. It didn't feel especially elevated, psychedelic, or intellectual either, just standard fantasy with less adventure than his earlier stuff.

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Noose by Eric Red

Noose

by Eric Red

2018, Pinnacle

Had high hopes for this western written by the man behind The Hitcher, Near Dark, Body Parts, and others, but too many things in a row just didn't ring true:

• Minutes after a murder, a teenager telegraphs in a bounty of $100,000 and gets it approved, about $3 million in today's money.
• The nearest law thinks it's fishy, but agrees to paying the sum as plan A and sending a posse to find the suspect for plan B.
• Noose is surrounded by a dozen men holding guns on him. He escapes by pushing them away (all twelve of them), jumping on his horse, and riding away, without getting hit, and gaining a considerable distance.
• He does the "wire across two lampposts decapitates a rider" bit with barbed wire on a ridge. No mention what the barbed wire was connected to or where Noose could have been hiding to raise the wire, how it was raised, if he was holding it how did he manage to keep his grip while the wire sliced off the bounty killers head, if the wire was held saddle high wouldn't the horse lose its head too, or how far behind was this rider from his buddies that they didn't notice until the riderless horse followed them long enough that they couldn't just turn around and see Noose rummaging through the corpse's stuff.
• Noose gets away again by sliding down an incline, the baddies watching from 150 feet away, clearly out of rifle range.
• Noose does a series of sneak attacks on foot against a group of men on horses, on the Wyoming plains, no mention how he's hiding or slipping away.

I stopped at this point. I was listening to the audiobook, thinking I must have missed something and it being too much of a pain to skip back. Checked the ebook and it flowed even worse. Everything is "big" and happens "suddenly", the two women in the book have female or lady as their first name ("female marshal" or "lady criminal"). Felt like an 11 year old wrote it and had none of the character of his films.

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Claw 1: Day of Fury by Matthew Kirk

Claw 1 Day of Fury
by Matthew Kirk (Angus Wells)
1983, Granada

Blacksmith Tyler Wyatt agrees to watch some money in a safe, which makes him the target of bandits. To stop his father in law from being tortured, he brings in his wife, who is gang raped in front of him and later murdered. Wyatt himself has his left hand crushed with a hammer, which he replaces with a multi-claw prosthetic.

The origin story is the main tale, with some flash forwards of him starting his long trail of revenge. Pretty basic story-wise, but nasty and gory in parts. The origin stories are usually the weakest, looking forward to future installments.

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Spur Giant - Soiled Doves by Dirk Fletcher

Spur Giant

Soiled Doves
by Dirk Fletcher
1995, Leisure

Spur McCoy investigates a train robbery with three major items stolen: bearer bonds, cash to buy a ranch, and the oversexed daughter of a politician. The reader is made aware early on that this is an inside job and the daughter is in on it, and it plays out similar to Fargo in some ways, though it came out a year earlier. They both draw from a noir background, don't think there's a direct connection.

McCoy does his investigation, but most of the action plays out without him, as the criminals double cross each other or are otherwise done in by their criminal lifestyle. Light on action, but plenty of sleaze and grit. The longer length means we get some subplot detours, like a woman talking her husband into sleeping with her sister and a criminal seducing a boarding house landlady.

The Soiled Dove is the name of a whorehouse that doesn't have much to do with the story.

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