| Title | : | Havens Blight (Deathlands, #102) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0373626126 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780373626120 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 320 |
| Publication | : | First published January 10, 2012 |
Bartering their expertise to a nautical band of brilliant technomads, Ryan's group fi nds trouble waiting in the steaming, fetid swamplands of the Louisiana Gulf. Merciless storms and pirates strand them in Haven. But the barony's inviting name masks a ville hijacked by fear, territorial conflict and monstrous horror. With the gravely injured Krysty Wroth's fate uncertain, a desperate Ryan aids the strange but hospitable Baron Blackwell in his effort to save Haven from a genetic blood curse. He'll succeed, provided his luck--and his options--don't run out first.
Havens Blight (Deathlands, #102) Reviews
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The extremely long-running
Deathlands series written under the house name James Axler describes the episodic adventures of a group of survivors roaming the wastes of the United States one hundred years after a nuclear apocalypse. Haven's Blight in particular (102nd in the series, from 2012) shows the team's travels through a portion of the Louisiana bayou, dealing with the extremely colorful local inhabitants. Ryan Cawdor and his capable band take on mutant manatees, bayou pirates, a mysterious beast terrorizing the local barony, mutated swamp people, and other terrors of the post-apocalyptic future.
I'd been dancing around trying one of the Deathlands books mainly because I was anticipating something brainless and embarassingly cliché-ridden, with a painful macho tone and one-dimensional characters. Not only did the novel defy those admittedly low expectations but I may have become a fan of the series. I had a great time reading this, which seems like an ideal go-to series for the airport or beach. The world described is replete with strange creatures and dangerous remnants of the old world, not to mention a lot of perfectly functioning 20th-century firearms. I've been trying to pin down the feeling it captures, and the closest I can get is to compare it to the
Fallout series of video games, or maybe the old
Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon except featuring a cast similar to that of
Firefly. It also feels like a shadow of one of my favorite series,
The Dark Tower. The quality is objectively less than any of those works, but it was a nice snack since I was in the mood for post-apocalypse adventure. This does feel like a comic book in many ways; realism and depth were left by the wayside in favor of the
Rule of Cool, which worked very well here. Ryan and his team were perfectly suitable as pulp protagonists, well-described and with enough personality to distinguish them. The writing style, while fairly average, did do an exceptional job of describing the bayou and all of the numerous action sequences.
Maybe still a bit of a guilty pleasure, but it was more than satisfying enough to recommend as light and fun reading.
