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.
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