Mini-Reviews 3: Three is Company

Anyone who guesses what the title is from wins some fake internet points and an imaginary medal that says "Person Who Guessed What The Title Is From."

 

 

The Sky-Liners by Louis L'Amour

It's been a while since I've reviewed a Louis L'Amour book on here. Time to rectify that.

This one is about two brothers, Flagan and Galloway Sackett, who get tasked with escorting a girl from Appalachia to Texas. This is complicated by the fact that a Bad Guy is chasing her to marry her for her money because she's rich, and she's currently nursing a major crush on said Bad Guy because she's unaware that, in addition to being a Guy, he is in fact Bad.

So they do attempt to escort the girl, and have a bunch of run-ins with the Bad Guy and his gang of assorted ne'er-do-wells along the way. And they meet up with Cap Rountree (one of the "other cool people" that I mentioned in my review of The Daybreakers) along the way, too, which was fun. I do like how random characters with their own Louis L'Amour books pop up in different ones.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for western violence and (I think) some bad language.

4 stars. This was decent.

Tags for this one: 4-star, adventure, Louis L'Amour, rated T, Western

Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun by Tolá Okogwu

 

Academy of Sun not actually on sun. Disappointed. DNF.

Videogame: IDK, didn't finish.

Stars: Insufficient data for meaningful answer.

Tags for this one: Modern setting, DNF'd

Changers no. 1: The Gathering Storm by H. K. Varian

 

It's about kids who can turn into mythological animals with superpowers.

 

I think that had I first discovered this series when I was like 11, it would have been my new favorite thing. However, I'm not 11, and this is too far below my general reading level nowadays for me to get as much enjoyment out of it as I would have back then.

That's not to say it's bad; it's just not my style anymore.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft E10+ for mild fantasy violence. This could make a decent videogame.

3 stars.

Tags for this one: 3-star, rated E10+, modern setting, urban fantasy

(Endnote: The names and surnames in Onyeka and the Academy of the Sun all have like five diacritics apiece. I get that it's foreign and all, but that's too many.)

"Bowdrie" by Louis L'Amour

This is basically a collection of short mysteries, which were published in adventure magazines. They're all about this one Texas Ranger named Chick Bowdrie, who rides around doing Texas Ranger things and solving crimes. 

There were eight stories in this collection, of which my two particular favorites were:

"Bowdrie Follows a Cold Trail," about Bowdrie happening upon an abandoned house where there's clearly been a murder and probably a kidnapping. He proceeds to dig up the titular cold trail, figure out who murdered the guy, and un-kidnap the kidnapped people.

"Bowdrie Passes Through," about Bowdrie happening upon a town gone bad under the thumb of the quintessential evil cattle bacon. It has a courtroom scene, and I happen to like those.

 

I don't have tons to say here.

 

My mom reviewed this too, so you can read her review if you want.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E10+ for western violence and a few traditional swearwords (not by good guys, I don't think).

I'm going to give Bowdrie (the book, not the person) 4 stars.

 

(Endnote: He's called "Chick" Bowdrie because his real name is Charles, but there was another Charles in his childhood school who was already "Chuck". This is revealed at the very end of the book.)

"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.)

"Ride the River" by Louis L'Amour

Well, that was a good adventure story.

Basically, Echo Sackett (the main character) receives word that she's to inherit some money. How much money she doesn't know.

It turns out to be quite a lot of money, but the guy who's handling the inheritance wants to keep it for himself, so he keeps sending randos to try to steal it from her.

But there's this (completely awesome) old dude who is on Echo's side in all of this, so he sends his son to help her out. Adventures ensue. The rest of this post is not going to be talking about the adventures, but instead talking about the old dude, Finian Chantry. He will enter my hall of fame... when I create one.

He became a high-powered lawyer such that everyone in Philadelphia kinda respects him and is like "don't mess with that guy". He also just calmly wanders through bad neighborhoods like they're normal neighborhoods. (When some guy was like "Dude, you can't just wander into there, you're like 86!" his response was basically "Irrelevant.") Aaaaaaand... *drumroll please* he's got a sword-cane.

Also, Echo brought him along to help her with the guy who's handling the inheritance. He proceeded to go "dude, stop being a jerk already" so hard on the guy that Echo got the entire thing in about a minute.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T for violence.

Aaaaand it gets four stars, for being a solid but not stellar book.

"Jubal Sackett" by Louis L'Amour

Finally and at long last, the reason why I've been reading and reviewing all those Louis L'Amour books. My mom said I might really like it, but being me I decided to read the previous three first. (Side note: these were not written in chronological order, but I'm reading them that way. It's like the Narnia books, except the Narnia books are better to read in publication order, whereas these aren't.)

My mom has done a more "here's what this book is about" review, so if you want one of those, go there. The book's plot is basically:

[insert character]: Imma attack you.

Jubal: no.

[insert character]: Well then imma attack [insert other character] instead.

Jubal: no.

 

[MINOR-ISH SPOILERS]

During the final fight, the Bad Dude attacks with "wide-sweeping cuts". At that point, I launched into a tirade, because that is not how you fence. Swinging your sword around dramatically is one of the first mistakes newbies always make, and it's always the first thing we have to learn not to do; against other newbies it's fine, but against someone who's skilled enough to take advantage of it, it's like an invitation to get stabbed while your sword is carried out of your opponent's way by the momentum from you swinging it around.

I was very happy when Jubal promptly took advantage of it and stabbed him. Either L'Amour knows a fair bit about fencing, it makes narrative sense, or both.

[END SPOILERS] 

Despite the existence of a couple annoying Bad Dudes, this book still gets 4 stars.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T again, mostly for Gomez (the aforementioned Bad Dude) and his dreadfulness, which might be a thing he annoys us with.

 

Didn't get any favorite lines from here.

"The Warrior's Path" by Louis L'Amour

Ayep, another L'Amour book. This one's not about Barnabas, as |he died in the last one|; it's about his son Kin instead. 

The book tells us what it's going to be about pretty much right off the bat, with some guy coming to ask Kin and his brother Yance for help. Because two young women (okay, I'm pretty sure one of them is like 10, but the other is an adult) have been abducted.

Naturally, they go on the warpath. I'm not actually sure what the titular "Warrior's Path" is supposed to be, other than a path of some sort. It's not actually much of a plot point.

Kin and Yance learn that this has happened before. Repeatedly. They figure out who's behind it (basically the bad guys are engaged in human trafficking, except we didn't have that term back when this takes place) and Kin tries to stop them, starting with the two most-recently-kidnapped girls. (I'm not sure what to call them because as I said, one of them is like 10, and the other one is an adult.)

The two kidnapped people actually manage to escape without the help of our main character or his brother; kudos to them for that. However, the Bad Guys manage to rekidnap Diana (the older one; will refer to her as Diana, as the younger one kinda disappears from the story) and abscond to Port Royal with her.

So Kin follows them. If you wanted to sum up the story in a conversation, it would go like this: 

Kin: "Stop kidnapping people."

Bad Guys: "No. Stop trying to stop us."

Kin: "No."

Kin shows up in Jamaica, where the Bad Guys promptly attempt to murder him. Repeatedly. Spoiler alert, Kin does not get murdered. Like his dad, Kin's too full of concentrated epicness for that.

Also, like my mom said, Kin and Diana get married. Not really a spoiler, as it's not hard to see that coming.

This book gets 4 stars.

 

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T again, for violence.

 

Favorite lines:

 

    "Have you ever engaged in pugilism?"

    Page 102. "Pugilism" happens to be a favorite word of mine, and having someone ask it here was just awesome.

 

    "Men enter the world to die. I merely expedite matters."

    Page 154. Said by a hired assassin who shortly fails to kill Kin.

"To the Far Blue Mountains" by Louis L'Amour

After the first book chronicled some of the life of Barnabas Sackett, this one does the rest of it. It intersperses action scenes (98% of the book, 2% of the time elapsed) with time skips (2% of the book, 98% of the time elapsed).

In this one, Barnabas falls afoul of Robert Malmayne (possibly an actual historical person, but I don't really know anything about him) who's apparently after getting the crown jewels which he thinks Barnabas has found. Barnabas hasn't found them. Robert Malmayne doesn't believe this.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that Barnabas ends up in America again. And runs into Native Americans again. And has thrilling adventures again. 

(Side note: I suspect my reviews of Louis L'Amour books are all going to be quite short. Y'all've been warned. Woot, two whole apostrophes in a single word!)

 

Barnabas has an interesting habit of walking into dangerous situations and declaring himself in charge. With anyone else, this would be suicidal, but Barnabas Sackett manages to be so dang good at it that he pulls it off. Repeatedly.

 

Anyway, unlike its companion, I'm only going to rate this one three stars. This is mostly due to all the time skips and |the main character dying in the end|.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T again, mostly for violence.

Favorite lines:

    "Come in, gentlemen!" I said. "But please, no quick movements as I've no wish to be cleaning scattered brains from the wall."

    Page 43. Once again, L'Amour's characters (another two-apostrophe word for ya) deliver threats in the most hilariously casual manner.

    "...I took [the child] carefully, for I'd no knowledge of babies."

    Page 212. "I'd no knowledge of babies" struck me as absolutely hilarious when I read the line. It still amuses me while I'm writing this blurb thing.

(Endnote: Barnabas has a great moustache, doesn't he? Also, my mom reviewed this one too.)

"Sackett's Land" by Louis L'Amour

Behold, a book different from pretty much everything I've previously reviewed here. 

The book is about one Barnabas Sackett, who tries to go on a trading venture to the New World. Then |he gets shanghaied| (to America, so that worked out) and has all sorts of adventures. Rollicking good fun, to quote... my mom, probably.

Also, unlike most other adventure story I've read, Barnabas does not really have an "incompetent-to-good-at-things" character arc. About which I am very happy, because said character arc is not my favorite of these. From descriptions I've read of Louis L'Amour books, they seem to mostly be about competent characters, so, woot! 

 

I'll give this thing four stars.

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: T, probably. Unlike most of the books I've reviewed here so far, Sackett's Land would probably be quite a fun videogame in the vein of something like Tomb Raider or Metal Gear. 

Favorite lines:

    I parried a blade, thrust, stepped back and with a toe kicked a block in the way of my opponent who spilled over it to hands and knees. If he came up from that--I flicked my blade sideways and down in a quick gesture--up from that he'd have to fasten his head on again.

    Page 141.

    (That is the absolute funniest way I've ever read of saying "yeah, I cut that guy's head off.)

EDIT: I forgot to mention this, but my mom read and reviewed this too.