Eric Brighteyes 2: A Witch's Welcome by Sigfridur Skaldaspillir

Eric Brighteyes 2
A Witch's Welcome
by Sigfridur Skaldaspillir (Mildred Downey Broxon)

1979 Zebra

The original Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard was published in 1891. This is more of remake than a sequel, and not much room to make this a series given that Brighteyes is born and dies in this Viking saga. 

Brighteyes is banished for a couple years from Iceland and does Viking stuff around the British Isles. Swanhild the witch is obsessed with him, and her manipulations lead to both their downfalls. In true saga form, most of the story is in broad summary, with some battles being wrapped up in a sentence. The more "real time" the story the better, but things speed up again towards the end making the conclusion feel like an epilogue. As this is someone's life story, not much in the way of a plot, just Eric going from place to place.

I've seen this described as the story from Swanhild's perspective, and while I haven't read the original to compare, most of the story focuses on Eric. I half expected some revisionist version, like the way Grendel was from the perspective of the monster, but not so much.

The book stands on weird moral grounds. While Eric seems to have some modern ideals (no killing monks, sees dishonor in attacking the weak) he's still a psychopathic serial rapist slaver. This is historical fiction and these are Vikings, after all, and most of the book is written without judgment. This is olden times and this is a story of horrible people doing horrible things to each other. However, there are parts that imply that Eric is supposed to be a honorable hero, and the ending definitely makes Swanhild out to be a villain deserving of being dragged to Hel at the end.

The ending plays sadly tragic for Eric, but it's hard to feel any sympathy. Can't get too outraged that he was framed for that one rape he didn't do. Morals aside, some occasional good battle sequences and historical details, but I didn't dig the narrative structure.

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Series Showdown: Six-Gun Samurai vs Renegade

Captain Gringo continues to bugger his way across Latin American while Six-Gun Samurai moves towards more conventional men's adventure. Captain Gringo empties a belt of his Maxim machinegun into Six-Gun Samurai, winning the Western division.

Series Showdown: Thrill vs Night Hunter

A foregone conclusion, Night Hunter wins best Horror series

Series Showdown: Vietnam Ground Zero vs The Killers

Writing a novel so grim it makes Vietnam War era POW torture seem light hearted is an accomplishment on it's own, but Vietnam Ground Zero held my attention better in the story. Vietnam Ground Zero smashes its rifle butt on the Killers skull, opening it like a ripe melon.

Series Showdown: Michael Kane vs Imaro

 We've seen the entirety of the Michael Kane universe (unless you count whatever the eternal hero thing is with Moorcock), while Imaro has two more novels and some uncollected short stories left. Kane's first installment had the better story, while the second had more imaginative elements, while the last had neither. I didn't enjoy the Nyumbani Tales near as much as the Quest for Cush, but it's clear that the author enjoyed them, something I wouldn't say for Moorcock.

Imaro marks the forehead of Michael Kane and sells him into slavery, winning the throne of best Fantasy series of all time.

Series Showdown: Division Finals

84 novels later, we're finally in the Division Finals of the Series Showdown.

In Fantasy, Sword & Planet crosses blades with Sword & Soul, as Michael Kane and Imaro face off.

In Men's Adventure it's WWII vs Vietnam, as the Killers and Vietnam: Ground Zero meet on the field of battle.

In Novelizations, alien invaders meet alien immigrants, it's the Predator vs Alien Nation.

In Horror, dark horse Patricia Wallace summons supernatural forces against the Night Hunter

In Westerns, two foreigners in strange lands slap leather - it's a showdown between Captain Gringo and the Six Gun Samurai.

In Science Fiction, space fugitive meets space detective - Hook vs Mathew Swain

In Historical Sleaze, Norsemen and Crusaders battle for supremacy. The Vikings are under siege by the Falcon.

Seven division. 14 novels. Stay tuned!

Series Showdown: Falcon vs Gladiator

Gladiator gave us some great colosseum sleaze, but Falcon had a little bit of everything. Flacon rams a boat oar up Gladiator's rectum, hoists it overhead, and flings it into the sea.

Series Showdown: Mathew Swain vs Simon Rack

Both had future societies centered around gaining status - the citizens of Aleph fought for the number of rooms to their apartment, while moon citizens fought for seniority ranking. Both underperformed, but Swain at least performed at all. Mathew Swain kicks Simon Rack out of the airlock.

Series Showdown: Spur vs Six-Gun Samurai

Neither plot really worked out, and Six-Gun Samurai was a step down from the first installment, but at least no children were molested on page. Spur begs for its life as Six-Gun Samurai denies it an honorable death.

Series Showdown: Dragon vs Night Hunter

Two violent tales of possession by spirits from ancient civilizations at an archeological dig. Both are strong, but Night Hunter is leaner, meaner, and has a distinct vibe I'm digging. The Night Hunter pisses in Dragon's mouth, shoves a sword up his jacksie, and dumps him in a bog.

The Killers 1: To Win and To Lose by Klaus Nettson

The Killers 1
To Win and To Lose
by Klaus Nettson aka Klaus Netzen (Laurence James)
1974 Mayflower, Zebra

John Standish is a forger turned anti-Nazi operative who's a part of the Killers, a loose international network of anti-Nazi criminals. His mission is to introduce forged currency into occupied Poland and rescue a British operative, Leslie Peters, before he's forced to reveal intelligence to the Gestapo.

Standish and his assassin/painter colleague Marreq navigate through Nazi checkpoints, organize a raid of a Nazi detention center, and escape via France during the evacuation at Dunkirk. All the while dealing with Peters, who aside from being a competent organizer is a bigoted, whining, rapist swine.

The moral compass of the Killers series is skewed by the notion that smaller sins, like murdering innocents to avoid detection, are necessary to fight the ultimate evil of Nazi Germany. One could ponder the ethical implications, but here it's justification for an exploitation novel to essentially follow a gang of psychopaths as the heroes.

The violence is ugly and brutal. Knife fights slipping on the emptied bowels of a strangled sex worker. Body parts showering down after an explosion. Pleasure boats ankle deep in vomit from hundreds of evacuating soldiers. A man struggling to stay conscious long enough to empty his veins with a safety pin.

Good plotting and historical details keep the story moving, even if half the pages seem to involve hanging around safehouses.

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Series Showdown: Silverglass vs Imaro

Imaro is one of the finest of the genre, while Silverglass barely qualifies. Silverglass trips over the ropes and knocks herself out getting into the ring. Imaro is the chosen one for the finals.

Mondo 2: Cocaine Kill by Anthony DeStefano

Mondo 2
Cocaine Kill
by Anthony DeStefano
1977 Manor Books

We open in the hospital where Mondo died and is now recovering. He faces his attacker from the first installment, Chan Ho Lee, and after defeating him he follows the pan Asian triad/samurai code and agrees to finish Lee's last mission, to take out drug kingpin Jacque Ku Khan, though he only takes up the mission because he hopes some money will be involved.

Mondo operates through the underworld of New York, recruiting former colleagues and cellmates, shaking down prostitutes, and coming up with a half-baked plan to borrow enough money to pretend to be a big time drug dealer. The plan falls through and Mondo is captured, tortured, and shot up with heroin.

Mondo escapes, chains himself to a tree to kick the junk, and gathers his forces for a final attack, including the mad dog who will clearly double cross them and the retired boxer who is clearly going to die. Mondo faces off with Kahn's bodyguard Turk while the rest of the conflict resolves itself off-page.

The book is strongest in the depictions of the sleaze of the streets, the lowlight being the mob boss who got back at his cheating gal by forcing her to do a sex show before slitting her womb open with a machete, ripping out a fetus, and stomping it into the ground. The plot tends to run aground a bit, and the fight scenes weren't much.

The story itself is pure blaxploitation, and would have been better with a Black protagonist. The only second person pronouns used are racial slurs, which goes down a bit harder with an Italian lead.

There was no cocaine.

Paperback from Amazon

Imaro 2: The Quest for Cush By Charles Saunders

Imaro 2

The Quest for Cush

By Charles Saunders

1984 Daw

Imaro, with his gal pal Tanisha and pygmy pal Pomphis head to the big city, where Imaro struggles to deal with laws, cops, and civilization. He fights a kung fu master in a pit fight, fights half stone golems, underground mutants, and a raiding party of fishmen.

Saunders gives a master class in having it both ways - Imaro's fighting spirit isn't always a strength, and Tanisha's compassion and Pomphis' diplomacy often forge a better way. Imaro learns that violence isn't always the answer, and even regrets his actions at times. Saunders shows you can express mature morality and still cut the heads off monsters.

He even has fun with the Chosen One cliché  - Imaro is destined to play a vital part in an oncoming conflict, but in the meantime he needs to get a job.

Note that the ebook versions had different cut offs - I read the paperback and missed a scene that originally in the first installment.

Paperback and Audiobook from Amazon

Series Showdown: The Crow vs Alien Nation

The Crow delivered by the end, but Alien Nation wins through consistency. Alien Nation delivers the death blow to the Crow's armpits.

Series Showdown: Black Brute vs The Vikings

A couple from the sleazier end of exploitation, the Vikings had a more engaging story and more bear fights. The Vikings launch a boat over Black Brute and move to the finals!

The Vikings 2: The Dark Return by Neil Langholm

The Vikings 2
The Dark Return
by Neil Langholm (Kenneth Bulmer and/or Laurence James)
1975 Sphere

When we left Erik Ragnarsson and his merry band they were stranded in Northern Canada, having forged a fragile peace with the locals. Relations have improved, and Erik and Raga go on an expedition for food during a brutal winter. Raga's tribe is having their own troubles, and fights off a raiding party with the Viking's help.

Jorund Crookback stays behind with the struggling colony while Erik and Raga return to Iceland, having to carry their boat over the frozen ice. They return to find that Erik's father has been kidnapped by the Irish and mount a rescue mission.

Solid wilderness survival with more action and brutality than the last installment. This is historical exploitation, one of the defining features being all the characters are miserable failures of humanity. In the first installment Eric had some heroic qualities that set him above the cruelty of his rival Jorund, but if anything Jorund is more heroic here. Probably part of a character arc, but hard to cheer on a guy who christens a boat by rolling it over a captive woman's spread legs and rapes his father's slave.

Paperback from Amazon

Black Brute 2: Runaway Slave aka Rampage by Robert Tralins

Black Brute 2
Runaway Slave aka Rampage
by Robert Tralins
1969 Lancer

Brutus escapes being eaten by hogs much like Glenn did with zombies in The Walking Dead and travels north. His crazed enslaver Jeremy recruits even more brutal Matthew to track Brutus down. Brutus is recaptured and forced to turn a gristmill 20 hours a day, taken out of chains only to participate in a donkey show.

Jeremy's brother in law Haroun steals some gold to buy back his sister, who Jeremy sold after cutting her tongue out. Matthew steals the rest of the gold stash and frames Jeremy. He pretends to go after Haroun and rapes an innkeeper and her two daughters along the way.

Jeremy makes an attempt at respectability and courts a young woman with progressive ideals, while also bedding her widowed mother. The young lady bangs Brutus and aids his escape, getting raped by Matthew in the process.

Nasty, brutish, and short.

Paperback from Amazon

Series Showdown: Spaceways vs Hook

Both books had hermaphroditic aliens with accompanying discussion on pronouns, with Hook even creating new ones. Hook was fun, while Spaceways was mostly filler and even the author lost interest. Spaceways is discorporated into individual atoms and scattered to the winds.

Hook 2: The Boosted Man by Tully Zetford

Hook 2
The Boosted Man 
by Tully Zetford (Kenneth Bulmer)
1974 New English Library

Ryder Hook takes a shuttle down to a planet, only to find the inhabitants attacked by a fungus that makes their eyes droop out of their sockets. The shuttle turns around, only to be refused landing by the mothership. Hook crash lands on a supposedly uninhabited planet to find a thriving industrial planet, rich in culture. Hook and his co-passengers find themselves working their days at cushy, well-paying jobs directing robots and spending their nights in fancy restaurants and going to the opera.

This is, of course, all an illusion. Slaves toil in radioactive factories, lulled into complacency by hypnotic generators. Hook snaps out of it due to his connection to the boosted men. Hook is a cyborg, but only had part of the procedure completed. He's capable of speeds so fast that time stops still and his clothes catch on fire, but his partial powers only kick in if he's in proximity to another, more powerful boosted man.

This leads to some interesting story devices. Hook doesn't know where the boosted men are or where they are, and if he dispatches them too quickly or moves too far away he'll lose his power and even be overwhelmed by the illusion. Hook has to figure out a way off the planet, rescuing a couple allies he's met, while being chased by security forces and hiding from the invincible boosted men.

This one was less violent and more light-hearted than the first installment, with Hook spending much of his time running around in hyper-speed naked bonking guards on the head. Great fun, and can only complain that it didn't get more mileage out of it's clever plot devices.

Paperback from Amazon