Monday, April 27, 2020

Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer: Prisoner of the Horned Helmet by James Silke

(pb; 1988: first book in James Silke’s Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer quadrilogy)


From the back cover

“In an age before Atlantis rose, an age rife with sorcery and violence, the earth trembled beneath the all-conquering hooves of the Kitzaak Horde, and only one man, Gath of Baal, dares to confront the Kitzaak lances, to stand between the never-defeated armies and the lush valley that will, long millennia in the future, be known as the Mediterranean Sea. To save the peace People of the Forest, Gath must dice with the gods, and the price he must pay is to become death made flesh, the Prisoner of the Horned Helmet.”


Review

Fans of Robert E. Howard’s Conan and other hypermasculine “men’s adventures” may find Prisoner to be a worthwhile purchase. Silke’s lusty, sometimes bordering-on-poetic writing highlights this brutal, basic and adjective-rich storyline and its well-written genre trope characters (sly magicians and intellectuals; wan, ripe-for-sex, scantily clad maidens/seductresses; cannon fodder soldiers; and, most important, steel-wielding, burly mega-warriors, who live mostly to tear men limb from limb). 

This is a work that embraces the magic-sex-hack-and-slash pathos of near-primordial humanity, one that predates─and would likely repudiate─our culture’s current P.C.-overdrive awareness, so if you’re looking for gender equality and nuance, do not read this book.

Prisoner is a great B-movie read for those who do not mind fantastic, Conan-raw, dark and violent takes on human nature and everything that stems from it. Followed by Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer: Lords of Destruction.

No comments: