Jim Silke (1931–2025)

So, the younger, broodier, grumpier brother of Conan (let's call him Clone-an), doing his best hermit out in the middle of nowhwere, where no one can find him (though, everyone seems to be able to find him), gets dragged out to do Conany stuff.

Then he gets a special helmet plunked on his head, and it makes him a broodier, grumpier barbarian superhero (Clone-an! Now with Spidey-sense!).

Honestly, it's books like this—and writers like this—that show us how uniformly well Robert E. Howard show more wrote sword and sorcery. Because with Howard, you'd never read gems like:

"Trang was short and thick, with a jaw big enough to eat table legs. He wore battered pieces of armor and a red helmet with heavy steel bars caging his face. An axe rode on his back; it was big enough to be his brother. "

...or...

"Robin peeked from under an elbow and saw an arm reach for her. Its hand looked big enough to send to school."

A jaw big enough to eat table legs? An axe big enough to be his brother? A hand big enough to send to school?

Excuse me, Mr. Silke, but you need to rethink some of your metaphors. This book is not supposed to be a satire.

Overall, the story itself isn't horrible. The writing is, as noted, not great, but it's pretty standard for 1970s sword and sorcery...unfortunately, this book came out in 1988.

Will I read the next one? Yes. Will I find it irritatingly written as well? Likely also yes. show less

I was actually surprised at this one. It was far better than the first installment. Yes, it still carried some of James Silke's eyewateringly silly similes and analogies, but less of them. Overall, the story was tighter, and the action bigger. And Gath, the titular Death Dealer, is progressing as a character. In fact, all the characters are, so that's fun.

I'm a little worried now, because I'm actually looking forward to the next installment. I hope it keeps the momentum going.

Overall, the writing was sliiiiiiiiiightly less awful than the previous three, however the plot seemed overly-complicated, and Gath—the titular Death Dealer of the series—was mostly sidelined for the first half of the novel to allow for that complicated plot to get up and spinning.

As well, if felt as though the author was doing some rather abrupt changes to the main characters, as he realized this was the final book, so they couldn't evolve, they just had to change.

So, while I'm glad I show more quenched my curiousity with the reading of these books, I still wish just one author, whether in comics or novels, could get the Death Dealer right. show less

A film starring Richard Chamberlain and Sharon Stone (Cannon, 1985).

Two people race the German army to find an African mine.

C (Indifferent).

I have a sort of affection for this movie simply because I watched it A Lot when I was too young to know any better. It is not good. Besides being a generally lazy production, it's also surprisingly racist for the 1980's (which is saying something).

(Jun. 2023)