Bryce Harte

My brother recommended the "Creed" series some time ago so I hunted up a copy of the eponymous volume in the series. I thought if the book was good I might read the entire ten volume series.

The book begins as a fun horse opera. The pace of the story is a bit slow and many of the main characters are exaggerated. The writing tends towards the melodramatic, with the overly stated emotions that is typical of western novels (e.g., depicting characters as stony-faced but with their true emotions reflected in their eyes). The writing is a bit preachy and superficial at times, and some archaic expressions (milch cow) appear.

The protagonist is Clete Slater, who takes the name, Slate Creed in the following books. The most annoying aspect of the book, and the feature that detracts most from the story, is that Slater is depicted as noble but so naïve as to border on dimwitted.

The ending is especially weak. Slater has been depicted as the most competent character in the book up until his final confrontation with the Detchen twins who murdered his best friend. Even though he has them covered with his revolver, they manage to knock him off his horse, resulting in his capture by the Union soldiers who were searching for him. The Detchens escape and the book ends with Slater leaving the woman he loves and vowing to search for the Detchens.

Everything considered, I can't rate this novel as better than an okay read. I try to include a couple of westerns in my reading every year and many of the pulp westerns are of much lower quality than this. Some of the newer westerns (e.g., the Virgil Cole and Everett Hitch series begun by Robert B. Parker) are somewhat better but if you like to read westerns this book is average to above average. The bottom line is that I will probably look up the second book in the series and give it a read when time permits.… (plus d'informations)