Thomas F. (hardtack) -
I love westerns, and have literally read hundreds of them in my life time. This particular western is definitely one of the worst. There are all kinds of errors in it which don't make any sense. And I wish that was the worst part of it. By the middle of the book I was skimming the pages to get the gist of the plot without having to read the trashy text.
For example, the U.S. Army is sending hundreds of brand new Winchester rifles and over 125,000 rounds of ammunition to Texas. For this they hire a freighting firm. They know the shipment is in peril from numerous sources. Does the Army provide an escort. Of course not. The freighting firm hires four out-of-work Texas cowboys to provide security.
Supposedly these Texans fought in the Civil War. On one page, Compton has the cowboy tell his lady friend he is not quite 24-years-old. A page or two later he states he rode with Colonel John Mosby's Raiders, which was a Virginia outfit, during the war. Yet the time of the novel is late 1873. This would make the cowboy only 13 or 14 when he rode with Mosby. Would never have happened. I think the author made up the book as he was writing it and didn't give it much thought.
When one of the four heroes gets shot, and they got wounded often, much attention is paid to their injuries and recovery. Yet, we are also introduced to the six, tough wagon drivers. But when they get wounded, nothing is said of their treatment and recovery. It's almost as if the mules were driving the wagons, as the further we get into the book, the less is said of the drivers.
When two of the heroes are badly wounded and pronounced dead, as they have no pulse, their bodies are taken back to camp, where one of the women massages them, and they once again have a pulse. Yet it only takes three or four days for the 'dead' men to get back into the saddle and labor on. Makes you wonder if that woman was later canonized as a saint.
But what was worse, he uses the four widows who join the wagon train to provide the sexual aspect of the book. First he has them kidnapped naked by renegades and then rescued by the cowboys while they are still naked. Then, for much of the book, he has the ladies and the cowboys discuss how they looked naked, how the cowboys liked seeing what they saw, and, to make it worse, he has the women initiating much of this conversation. Not something you find in your typical western.
Then he has them captured by deserters from the U.S. Army, including an officer, who rape the women, or otherwise force them to have sex, on a continual basis.
Thinking back, I seem to remember the author doing this in another of his books. Makes you wonder what kind of sexual problem the author had.
I checked Fantastic Fiction and Compton died in 1999, but he wrote this book in 1997. Perhaps he was in his Dirty-Old-Man period. After 1999, "Compton's books" were written by others using the Compton name.
For example, the U.S. Army is sending hundreds of brand new Winchester rifles and over 125,000 rounds of ammunition to Texas. For this they hire a freighting firm. They know the shipment is in peril from numerous sources. Does the Army provide an escort. Of course not. The freighting firm hires four out-of-work Texas cowboys to provide security.
Supposedly these Texans fought in the Civil War. On one page, Compton has the cowboy tell his lady friend he is not quite 24-years-old. A page or two later he states he rode with Colonel John Mosby's Raiders, which was a Virginia outfit, during the war. Yet the time of the novel is late 1873. This would make the cowboy only 13 or 14 when he rode with Mosby. Would never have happened. I think the author made up the book as he was writing it and didn't give it much thought.
When one of the four heroes gets shot, and they got wounded often, much attention is paid to their injuries and recovery. Yet, we are also introduced to the six, tough wagon drivers. But when they get wounded, nothing is said of their treatment and recovery. It's almost as if the mules were driving the wagons, as the further we get into the book, the less is said of the drivers.
When two of the heroes are badly wounded and pronounced dead, as they have no pulse, their bodies are taken back to camp, where one of the women massages them, and they once again have a pulse. Yet it only takes three or four days for the 'dead' men to get back into the saddle and labor on. Makes you wonder if that woman was later canonized as a saint.
But what was worse, he uses the four widows who join the wagon train to provide the sexual aspect of the book. First he has them kidnapped naked by renegades and then rescued by the cowboys while they are still naked. Then, for much of the book, he has the ladies and the cowboys discuss how they looked naked, how the cowboys liked seeing what they saw, and, to make it worse, he has the women initiating much of this conversation. Not something you find in your typical western.
Then he has them captured by deserters from the U.S. Army, including an officer, who rape the women, or otherwise force them to have sex, on a continual basis.
Thinking back, I seem to remember the author doing this in another of his books. Makes you wonder what kind of sexual problem the author had.
I checked Fantastic Fiction and Compton died in 1999, but he wrote this book in 1997. Perhaps he was in his Dirty-Old-Man period. After 1999, "Compton's books" were written by others using the Compton name.
