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Post by bushwick on Jun 15, 2008 17:21:02 GMT
It's an interesting one KC...my theory here is, shorter books tend to stick in my head as a visual thing a lot more, like a film. Around 120 pages, like all the PC Westerns, really resonates in a visual way for me, no padding, lots of set-pieces, broad characterisation. A longer book has resonant moments but can be too sprawling. Case in point - i can remember just about all of 'The Sucking Pit' but can I remember anything about 'The Illuminatus Trilogy' by R A Wilson and R O'Shea?? Pulpy stuff is definitely better short.
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Post by bushwick on Jun 15, 2008 14:51:46 GMT
Finally got round to finishing this...I let it rest for a while when I probably should have just piled through it. I was a bit tired of it by the end, to be honest. The climax is VERY far-fetched and hard to follow, to say the least, and feels a bit rushed despite the 400 or so pages that precede it.
Hmmmm. Can't quite get my head round why I wasn't more into this. As I said before, I was finding it enjoyable, then it started pissing me off. It's pretty gory, but I can't really class it as horror. Perhaps if I'd been expecting a straight procedural crime thriller I would have been pleasantly surprised by the 'ghoulish' stuff. Might bother with 'Headhunter' but I'm in no rush.
That's the last 'long' book i'm going to be attempting for a while. God I have become very retarded. Crow 2 at the mo then the Sabat series I think.
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Post by bushwick on Jun 14, 2008 19:35:38 GMT
Just got:
Crow 2: Worse Than Death GNS: Bamboo Guerillas Sloane by Steve Lee (kung fu PC Western)
but they were off amazon so that's cheating. But, I found all 4 GNS Sabat books in good nick for £1.40 each today, and Edge 51 for a quid! Also got some other stuff like a Mick Farren novel and a Christopher Pike, but they pale in comparison really innit.
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Post by bushwick on Jun 10, 2008 18:45:53 GMT
Easy KC! I read the first 6 Witches books during a restful weekend at my Dad's in Cumbria last year. I imagined I was the hearty John Ferris, as I wandered across the fells. Very inspiring. Really enjoyed them, and I got the phrase "the reek of masculinity" from one of them, which I typed into my phone I liked it so much. Everything you need is there - wooden characters, nasty sex, torture, a black guy scaring some gypsies as they think he's a devil because they've never seen a black person before. They even eat a dog, at one point. Remarkable stuff. Still need to get the last two though. Did you enjoy them?
As for Herne - have you read any of the Breed series? I've read 3 and they're all excellent. Very grisly stuff, throughout the whole series I'm led to believe (some of the Hernes are a bit tame on the gore). Azul the half-breed...he's a good lad, but if you cross him he will sadistically, slowly kill you in a horrible way (the Apache way apparently). Edge or Herne would just pop a cap in your ass.
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Post by bushwick on Jun 10, 2008 9:49:13 GMT
Most violent book I've read, I think, although Apache Death comes close. Stupid and nihilstic, with no artistic redeeming features. I like the way the mantises obviously tear women's breasts off with their claws, loving described by 'Nace'. There's no way a woman wrote this. (What is it about breast mutilation in pulp novels? Features in a lot of the Westerns too. Psychologists would have a bloody field day).
I've not got my copy to hand, but I seem to remember the final slaughter of the guy and his entire family being particularly OTT. And I also like the way ABSOLUTELY NO EXPLANATION is given as to why the outsized mantises are coming up through cracks in the earth. It doesn't matter, does it - cut to the chase. If this was GNS we would at least have some half-assed 'undersea Soviet nuclear testing' angle to explain it.
(Off topic for a mo', but the board's been really kicking off lately, hasn't it? It's good. Was a bit quiet a few months back)
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Post by bushwick on Jun 9, 2008 22:20:24 GMT
I raced through this and loved every minute of it. Audacious isn't the word. The fact that some (unknown) person actually wrote this, and then a major publisher actually published it, and it was available in WH Smiths and shit...the mind boggles. Someone HAS TO go public and admit to writing this, or it's a very sad day for literature. I want to know who 'Pierce Nace' is as much as I want to know who Alex White is. If this was a film, it would have been re-released on DVD probably. As is, this will just fade into the mists of time unless people like us keep the dream alive! I will write something to rival this one day, I promise...'The Violent Champions' is the closest I've got so far, but that's ineffectual pish compared to this novel. This is the ink-and-paper equivalent of GG Allin's worst excesses.
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Post by bushwick on Jun 9, 2008 18:17:42 GMT
I think "Eat Them Alive" might have been written by GG Allin. What an incredible book. I must read it again (got a PRISTINE copy off Amazon for 1p!). Do you reckon it sold many at the time?
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Post by bushwick on Jun 4, 2008 15:30:22 GMT
This is a phenomenal book. It's reputed to be the goriest of all the Edges isn't it? I've read most of the first 20 and I'd have to concur. It's ludicrously brutal in its descriptions of violence. It tears along though, and I recall old Joe makes a remark somewhere along the line to the effect of 'the Indians were here first, ma'am' or similar. Sometimes his amorality is very moral, if you get what I mean.
The interplay with the camp white-suited English gambler is a pleasure to read. They're a formidable team - Edge has almost met his match with this dandy - and the constant ribbing of each other (mainly Edge on 'English' with constant 'you're a poof'-type cracks) is a nice 'buddy movie' kind of touch. I say it about many things, but what a film this would make! We'd have to dig Lucio Fulci up to direct it...
This is the Edge I lent to my mate to show him why I harp on about PC westerns all the time (he loved it btw). Terry Harknett is a very gifted writer - the plotting is clever and tight, deceptively so, and his lean character descriptions are really effective. You can tell he's writing quickly, but he's usually got a flowing prose - not so many 'put the book down and giggle' early Guy N Smith-style moments. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind!
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Post by bushwick on May 31, 2008 13:53:56 GMT
battered copy of "Boot Boys" by Richard Allen for a pound Edge: Killer's Breed James Lee Burke - The Neon Rain Wereblood, and Werenight - both by Eric Iverson Sabre - Don McGregor and Paul Gulacy (post-apocalyptic-Western graphic novel, from the 70s, featuring a black hero...looks interesting, will report back)
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Post by bushwick on May 31, 2008 12:38:21 GMT
Futura, 1985. (Got no scanner and can't find a pic online...shame, as it's damn funny)
"AMERICA'S LAST HOPE!
When America is brought to its knees by Russia's nuclear sneak attack, it's Ted Rockson, the Doomsday Warrior, who rallies the scattered Free Cities to rise up and fight the Soviet invaders. While the land of the brave is not yet the land of the free, at least Rockson rekindles the fires of hope - until the new American Revolution suffers a crippling blow when he's captured by the Reds and dragged off in chains to Moscow.
Half a world away from his loyal troops, Rockson is trapped in the evil centre of a world gone mad. Inside the walls of the Kremlin, surrounded by KGB agents, there is no running and no escape. He has only one choice: to die in the name of freedom, fighting for a cause known as America - as he wages a one-man war that could only be fought by the...
DOOMSDAY WARRIOR"
"The dwarf lifted his mallet again and leaped up, searching frantically around for the next opponent. But there were none. Just a charnel ground of mutilation, blood and pieces of flesh. He could scarcely believe it. The crowd began cheering him, standing in their seats, laughing and sarcastically applauding this 'great gladiator'. The dwarf raised his now blood-coated weapon high in the air and turned slowly, letting the crowd see this hero of the misfits..."
An immense tiger, nearly five feet high at the shoulder, rushed at a buxom white Irish girl with skin as fair as the first November snow. But it wasn't a quick or efficient killer. It ripped out one of its plate-sized paws, the claws fully extended like a row of daggers, and slashed across her chest. Her right breast was ripped from her body like a piece of flimsy paper...
Rock stared at the man incredulously, not quite knowing what to say. "Are you all musicialns? I see you're holding a clarinet." "Oh," Yuri Goodman said with a smile, "this not regular clarinet. This be weapon, too - sonic boom-boom. Understand?"...he pointed his brass clarinet toward the mouse and played a sweet extremely high note. The mouse froze, then shivered and dropped dead.
I could go on...you can pick a page at random really
Without a doubt, the stupidest book I have ever read. Absolute gold. Picked this up at a market stall a fair while back (for 30p I think!) for the cover - don't go a bundle for most sf usually but this features a nice 80s heavy metal album cover-style painting of two very muscular dudes (one big Chewbacca-type meathead and one smaller, hunkier chap) in post apocalyptic Mad Max-style gladiator duds weilding futuristic cutting weapons. They are surrounded by blades and the backdrop is Moscow...
This is so ludicrous on so many levels I don't know where to start. Virulently anti-Communist to the point of hilarity (the big bloated toad-like Russian leader sleeps with two little children, for instance), ridiculous plot devices, OTT violence, paper-thin characterisation like watching He-Man or something, sexism, racial stereotypes, badly written sex...great stuff in other words. There's a big old series of 'em, going right into the Perestroika period but still hatin' on the Reds I assume. Will try and pick more of these up. Ted Rockson is the Ultimate American, taking on the Reds almost single-handedly sometimes. He's very difficult to kill, as he has mutant blood, or something...
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Post by bushwick on May 31, 2008 11:59:20 GMT
4 pages and 'wot no LJ?'!
Let's start one of these shits for Mr James. Any favourites?
I've only just scratched the surface, but thus far, I have greatly enjoyed the 'James Darke' 'Witches' series, the two Crow novels I've read (first and last), 'The City' by Richard Haigh (ludicrous farce, broad Python-esque comedy, the two existential old guys on the stall who are straight out of a Beckett play, narrator speaking directly to reader, i.e. "Remember what happened before?"...very clever authorial distancing there...anyway...mixed with some really nasty incongruous sadism with sexual edge...whoa!!), 'Apache 4: Death Train', and the Herne the Hunter's that I've read...I've got a couple of 'Deathlands' that I haven't read yet. Really want to get hold of the biker books and the notorious 'Cut'. He apparently wrote this with John Harvey but it didn't get published in the UK as it was about snuff movies and too explicit? Has anyone read this, or know anything more about it? How much do I want to read that book! hehe...
Any recommendations or favourites?
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Post by bushwick on May 31, 2008 10:27:27 GMT
I've got a few Hernes...number 3 is 'The Black Widow', a classic tale of Oedipal relations and heroin addiction. Another LJ but not quite so gruesome. Really filmic though. Also have 'Cross Draw', which is a John Harvey if I remember rightly - in this, Jed shows his compassion for a closeted gay man, seriously. That's one thing that's quite 'nice' about some of these books - there were some quite liberal social attitudes shown, as regards racism and prejudice. Indians are not neccessarily shown as monsters - the 'civilised' being the real animals etc. Saying that, I've only read one Caleb Thorn, and there's absolutely no socially redeeming features there whatsoever as far as I can tell!
The PC Western movement as a whole really does warrant an in-depth analysis, and would make a great book - you could write one just about the puns and cultural references alone. They were mass- market, really popular books that will have shaped a lot of readers' attitudes, in a crafty way. For instance, is there any connection between the punk ethos and the likes of Edge? These books started at the arse-end of 'flower power' and proliferated through the dark 70s and greedy early 80s - maybe the heroes reflected a more cynical society (or maybe I'm being all 'academic' and reading way too much into it...).
Case in point though - anyone remember the classic late 70s Judge Dredd epic (back when 2000AD was good), 'The Cursed Earth'? Looking back on it, it could well have been inspired by the likes of Josiah and them - amoral, hard-ass hero on a quest through the wasteland, picking up wanderers along the way, all of whom of course perish. Cultural nihilism as a backdrop for strikes, 3 day weeks and powercuts, increasing urban tensions etc? I think there's definitely something in all that...or maybe I'm an arty ponce???
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Post by bushwick on May 28, 2008 11:29:50 GMT
"Wild Rose City, Dakota Territory. Eliza and Lily Sowren ran the town with a fist of iron. Eliza tall and bony, Lily short and fat – both tough as nails. On the surface they were both pictures of elderly virtue but beneath something altogether different…As Jed Herne found out when the sisters called on his special talents to protect their silver mine from an unknown gang of thieves and murderers…" Beautiful Chris Collingwood cover of Jed taking out a young punk. Jed is skint, sat in a bar down to his last few cents. He's weighing up this telegram requesting his services. There's been a lot of robberies of silver ore at a town down in the Dakotas, and they want him to act as a guard and maybe try to get to the bottom of it all. He's hesitant, as it would mean being in the employ of a) a town council (too much bureaucracy and bullshit) and b) two women (irrational, temperamental etc...don't get him started). But he's broke so he takes the job. The Sowren sisters are the superficially prim and proper rulers of the town, one short and fat, one tall and skinny. They are broadly drawn, grotesque characters straight out a Grimm's fairy tale, and of course, all is not as it seems... Double-crossing, duplicity and sheer bloody murder abound, 'shards of bone', 'brain matter' etc. Have read a few Hernes now, and I'm definitely a fan. He's not the most distinctive PC hero in some ways - his schtick is, he's a bit old and young wannabes constantly try and test him (and his one liners aren't quite as sharp as Edge's) - but the books read very well and are pretty gruesome, the Laurence James ones more so than the John Harvey's. And this here is an LJ...all the signs are there - a detached, somewhat knowing narrator, torture scenes and nihilstic attitude, exemplified by lines such as "Dying is very easy. The only basic qualification is being alive in the first place"! Perverted sexual obsession and nasty torture scenes could come straight from LJ's 'Witches' series. There's a nervous, heroin-addicted, curly haired mine manager called Robert Zimmerman, one of Laurence's cheeky music references. Herne also refers to Josiah C. Hedges, Caleb Thorn and 'the meanest and coldest son of a bitch Jedediah Herne had ever met', Crow! This is a great little Western, full of tense and dramatic set-pieces, OTT characters and with no love interest to distract from the action. The finale is very filmic indeed. An excellent couple of hours, well-spent...
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Post by bushwick on May 28, 2008 10:37:25 GMT
Am reading this at the mo (slowly, not like me...have interspersed with a Herne the Hunter and will read some more short pulps before I finish). As stated, it's very long! Many, many story threads, impeccably researched, big emphasis on forensics/police procedurals that make it almost like an episode of CSI or something. Some very gory deaths so far. I'm enjoying it...in a way it reminds me of Rex Miller stuff, espec Frenzy, much exposition of the detective's character. Very much set in the 'real world'. More of a murder mystery than a straight horror, in my book. References to Lovecraft, EC comics, heavy metal, horror movies. I get the feeling the end of this may be anti-climatic, not sure why, but I'll let you know!
My copy IS a NEL, btw, 1993, with a nice cover painting - close up of ghoul's masked face, blade glistening in the night...
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Post by bushwick on May 26, 2008 11:14:15 GMT
I used to have pristine copies of some of the NEL ones when i was younger, 'Black Stud', 'Voodoo Queen'. Robert Tralins? Would love to find 'em again, they must be knocking about at my ma's somewhere. Wasn't a big afficionado of true pulp dirt back then, but remember skimming one and there was a truly horrible revenge attack described - a gang of thugs killed a girl with a massive carved wooden dildo, as punishment for going with one of the slaves.
By all accounts, a lot of these books are VERY off-key indeed, and hard to find too. Anyone got more info? think Justin knows a bit about this brief 'literary movement'?
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