MY ⭐️ RATING: 4.25/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Bastard. Killer. Husband. Father. His wife cold in the ground, and two young boys to feed, Wil Cutter turns to what he knows: Violence. But a bounty is never just a bounty, and blood is never spilled in drops. Forced to ever more violent acts, he’ll have to ask himself: Is Hell too far to ride?
MY REVIEW
Snyder has described this SPFBO9 finalist as The Unforgiven meets Jacob’s Ladder and holy crap is that not right on the money. If that was the idea to write this, then he absolutely nailed that, because before I saw that description, I had that in my head, then I saw that from a tweet in 2022 and knew I was on the right path, it also kinda made me feel like a bit of a another Eastwood film, The Outlaw Josey Wales because this seemingly pays homage to that and other westerns as well, like True Grit, and even 3:10 to Yuma. He also pays homage to fellow authors Michael R. Fletcher and Sarah Chorn, and even Dog the Bounty Hunter has a slight homage as well.
Clayton did a good job of making me feel like I was in the plains and the old western towns as he described them, but there’s not really a location that’s really ever said since he uses fake names, other than one which I referenced earlier as a homage, which is Yuma, so there may be some kind of point of reference to use around the Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado area since he does mention mountains and such. There’s also not really a true point of time reference, only using the last two digits, but it’s can easily be assumed that it’s set in the 1870’s, especially since Yuma didn’t become Yuma until 1873. One of the other homages that I loved is seeing The Dripping Bucket finding its way into another GrimDark novel!
“Men are savage creatures, as wont to turn to anger and violence as any animal. Sure, you could dress them up, give them a bit of book learnin’, but in the end, they were all terror and blood and hate. Least in my experience.”
This was such a brutal and dark story, Wil goes through so much and it’s hard to imagine what one would do dealing with the amount of turmoil that he had to go through, but it’s amazing what Clayton packs into such a short time while Wil goes on a revenge tour that left me sad, angry and shocked. There’s a lot going on here with the normal story plus flashbacks that can confuse you, if you’re not paying close enough attention. On top of that, there are a bunch of characters that came and went as the story unfurls, but there’s plenty of banter, but the one that I liked the most was between Wil and Anne, it had me giggling just a tad.
I enjoyed Jarrod Taylor’s narration, as he made Wil sound a bit like a mixture of Clint Eastwood’s famous drawl paired with a bit of Billy Bob Thornton. The only real issue I had with his narration was that there were a few times when he had to raise his voice, and when doing that, he never pulled away from the mic, so the quality of the sound lowered and became a bit muddled. Thankfully, there was only a handful of those that were just a few words, here and there, that weren’t a main part of the narration.
Wolfmantula.com 