"The Daybreakers" and "High Lonesome" by Louis L'Amour

IMPORTANT NOTE that I'm reviewing TWO books here, because I don't have much to say about either.

Finally and at long last, we're to the Sackett books that are actually set (mostly) in the Old West. This one is about two guys who were in "the Sackett-Higgins feud", and the Sackett side won it. Because of course they did, the Sackett family is like the Chuck Norris of Louis L'Amour.

Buuuuuuuuut our main character's brother, Orrin, got shot at during his wedding, and the bullet killed his bride-to-be instead. So he and his brother Tyrel (the main character) go West.

They team up with other cool people and go have a bunch of adventures, most of which have something to do with Orrin's marriage to the daughter of a really annoying guy. And/or Tyrel's extended crush on the daughter of a not-annoying guy.

 

This book is more serious than the previous Sackett books, but not as serious as High Lonesome (see below).

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T to T15+, erring on the T side, for violence.

4 stars.

 

 

This isn't a Sackett book at all; it's about a serial bank robber named Considine. And also his sharked-up list of lawless resolutes, his crush Lennie, and her dad Dave. 

He attempts to rob the absurdly well-defended bank in a town sheriff-ed by a guy named Pete Runyon, who was Considine's BFF until they had a falling-out over a woman. |Considine succeeds in robbing the bank|. (Yeah, spoiler tags are dark grey now because it looks less dumb than the giant blank spaces.)

Then Considine and his sharked-up list of lawless resolutes |nope out of there, heading for the proverbial and literal hills|. Due to mild plot shenanigans and a bunch of murderous Apaches (not the helicopters), all the characters I mentioned at the beginning of the High Lonesome review end up in a defensible place: the titular High Lonesome.

They |hold off the attacking Apaches for a while, but Hardy, Dutch, and "the Kiowa"--Considine's lawless resolutes--all die. The Kiowa gets to have his moment to shine, though, stalking and killing a bunch of the enemy|.

|Then the posse, formed to catch Considine and take the gold back, shows up and rescues Dave and Lennie. They think Considine's dead. He's not. The end has him riding off into the sunset after Lennie, because they started being in looooooove|.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T15+ for violence. 

4 stars.

(Endnote: High Lonesome would make a decently fun wave-defense videogame. The Daybreakers would be more of a Fallout-like sandbox-game-with-a-story, I think.)