William Hopson
Auteur de High Saddle
A propos de l'auteur
Œuvres de William Hopson
Mexico After Dark: From Pleasure Palaces to Home Grown Drug Orgies (Macfadden PB, 50-362) (1964) 3 exemplaires
The Guns of MacCameron 2 exemplaires
The Ranch Cat (a/p/a: Straight From Boot Hill) 1 exemplaire
Guns of the Clan 1 exemplaire
Apache Kill 1 exemplaire
The Robed Horsemen 1 exemplaire
N P Puncher 1 exemplaire
Massakre i Montana (Dansk Pocket 136) 1 exemplaire
Le grand convoi 1 exemplaire
Notched Guns, Abridged 1 exemplaire
Hight Saddle & Way Station West 1 exemplaire
Étiqueté
Partage des connaissances
- Sexe
- male
Membres
Critiques
Statistiques
- Œuvres
- 44
- Membres
- 113
- Popularité
- #173,161
- Évaluation
- 3.6
- Critiques
- 3
- ISBN
- 55
In the first third, the “hero” of the story is caught cutting off the ears of a dead warrior and this ear cutting goes through the rest of the book. But the middle section is where the brutality gets going with a full description of the Adkins massacre, the incident that fuels Bud Adkin’s (our hero) thirst for vengeance. After that, there’s a scene where a pair of hounds are found alive post-massacre with their hind legs tied and their bellies slit, so they’re put out of their misery. There is a description of “the dead lying scattered with buttons straining over swollen bodies”, a brief but graphic description of the amputation of an arm at the shoulder, and a disturbing episode with diseased horses and burning corrals. I was not expecting this level of gore and it’s a shame that the book was not better written.
The last third was easier to read leading up to the big battle, it was frankly just better written/edited. The hero does take a pretty nasty vengeance on the main villain, Black Rope, by not only defeating him in a fight but humiliating him by putting him in a squaw’s dress, not the last of his indignities before his end. This would have been much more satisfying if the villain was built up more as a character, his and his warrior’s brutal and effective tactics were just not enough as they were fighting for their ancestral land. However, the Adkin’s Massacre did paint him as a personally savage man but that served more to motivate the hero than anything else. The main problem with the inciting incident is that we’re told about it, it is gruesome, but experiencing it as a scene would have been so much more effective. Hell, if that opened the book, it would’ve hooked me immediately.
I don’t know if I’d ever recommend this book even to the most avid western-genre fan due to the garbled nature of the text in the first third and the overreliance on telling through the mouths of characters rather than showing. I don’t often harp on the “show rather than tell” mantra as in books you can tell rather than show for many reasons but here, there was a better way to go. The only redeeming quality here is the sheer brutality on show. Even the big finale battle is lackluster in its actual execution. Frankly, I think I let the title seduce me.
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