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Book Review: The Revenant and the Cult - Book One by Herman P. Hunter
May 21, 2024
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There are different ways to combine genres. A writer can take things like dragons and wizards, fantasy things, and pit them against cowboys for a fantasy western. I’ve dabbled in that sort of thing a few times and it’s gratifying, if fairly simple. It’s another thing entirely to take to the motifs of a western and subtly weave them into a fantasy story.

This is where Herman P. Hunter excels. 

The Revenant and the Cult - Book One: The Trapper and the Missing Spy is his followup to The Revenant and the Tomb, which was intended as a standalone novel. However, the Halsedric character was so well received it only made sense to send him on another adventure. This time the resurrected hero and his warrior companion, Herodiani (whom we might compare to an Elf), are looking for a path to seat of dark power so they can stomp it out. Potentially watched by unseen eyes, a direct approach is unwise. So they need a spy/scout/guide.

Unfortunately, they had one and he’s missing.

Halsedric hires a second man, Roe, a trapper familiar with the general area and meets with him before he can suffer the same fate. Not only does Roe know the geography, he also knows the honest farmers carving out lives from the land. This is where the western elements come into play. There’s a new political power in the nearby city, a man named Karne, who is trying to buy up all the land. And if that isn’t bad enough, things are taking livestock and men in the dark.

In the great western tradition, it’s a landgrab.

Most of the novel is about gathering information. Bad things are happening, but before Halsedric can go in with sword blazing he needs to who’s who, what they’re doing, and why. But in this lawless world, where anyone can tell him a lie or slip a knife in his guts with equal ease, acquiring that information is difficult. It’s fairly obvious who can be trusted, but they don’t know much. And when the bad guys are fanatical enough to kill themselves rather than talk…

You get the idea.

One of the things I appreciate most about Hunter’s writing is the way he builds worlds that feel lived in, dusty and old. All the Tolkien-esque tropes are here, but rather than used as crutches for lazy storytelling, they’re gateways to ease us into his unique fantasy realm. Unlike many who have trod this path, Hunter’s stories have a moral core with clearcut good and evil, with just enough questions and shades of gray for some conflict. 

As a reader, there’s only one thing I wish was different, and it’s small.

Hunter takes an elevated voice for his prose, which lifts his story to the level of Robert E. Howard and sets us firmly in a different reality. However, sometimes the descriptions get repetitive and more variety in certain word choices would be appreciated. It’s a minor flaw in the grand tapestry of the narrative. The pace of story is tight and I read the first five chapters in an afternoon, I was so engrossed.

Now I have to wait.

This only part one, and, while it doesn’t end on a cliffhanger, the story is unfinished, leaving us hungry for the rest. 

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Tuesday Update

New article is on the way, but I'm feeling too overwhelmed to crank it out.

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Update!

I cover it in the the video, but I've got some new professional writing opportunities coming up and I'm trying to finish my next novel, all while navigating a change in schedule. So look for more pictures and videos, and new articles here on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

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He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion

Leo and Britt come face to face with a prehistoric god a new cult on Saturn. Can they save the children doomed to sacrifice and escape?

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Conclusion
He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 2

Leo and Brittany have arrived on Saturn, but not in the way they'd hoped. Captured by a pagan cult, they don't have time to stop the unthinkable from happening. But they'll try anyway.

Content warning: language and sexual situations.

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Star Wars is dead and the more apathy you show the faster it will be allowed to rest in peace.

Instead of griping about what Disney has done, why don't you listen to my space adventure story? He Who Rides on the Clouds is supernatural noir that spans space and time. When children on Mars go missing, Alexis Leonard and his ex-wife Brittany go looking. Their search leads them to a pagan temple and an ancient religion.

If you'd like to buy the story and read ahead, it's available in the Fall 2020 issue of Cirsova, available here: https://amzn.to/3yRRywY

He Who Rides on the Clouds - Part 1
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Alien (1979) Movie Review

It'd been about 20 years since I last saw Alien, and then it was only because a roommate demanded it of me. I've never gone further into the franchise.

We've been trained to go into every movie as if it's an amusement park. There was a time (and Alien is a prime example) when movies were approached as art exhibits. Yes, Alien has moments of horror. But it's not primarily a horror film designed to carry us on visceral reactions. Instead, it's a finely tuned suspense movie.

In every frame there's something to consider. It might be the characters, how their unique motivations and personalities draw different things from the others. It might be the texture of the ship, not polished like the USS Enterprise or an Imperial Destroyer, but wet and dirty. It might be space itself, which is vast, unknowable, and filled with unspeakable terrors.

H.P. Lovecraft knew a thing or two about unspeakable terrors. He wrote, "Atmosphere, not action, is the great desideratum of weird fiction. Indeed, all that a wonder story can ever be is a vivid picture of a certain type of human mood."

It's not that you need to be "media literate" to appreciate Alien. The media literate person will look at the opening of the movie and note how the camera floats through the empty ship while the crew is asleep to give us, the viewers, the sense of intruding where we don't belong. If that's your thing, I'm right there with you. Most people don't want to be media literate, and that's a good thing.

In order to appreciate Alien, all you need to do is allow yourself to slip into the atmosphere, the mood, it creates.

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Why Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope' is More Relevant Now than Ever

When I first saw Rope, as a young college student, I didn't really appreciate it. Sure, the illusion of the 82 minute continuous shot was impressive. Watching the "perfect" murder fall in on itself was satisfying. But now, having lived some life, and especially in light of recent events, Rope is more poignant than ever.

Rope was Hitchcock's first color film and is based on a play, which was in turn inspired by actual events. Two gay men attempt to commit the perfect murder, and then ghoulishly host a dinner party at the scene of the crime, going so far as to serve the meal on the trunk in which the body is hidden.

In an even more perverse flourish, they invite the victim's parents, girlfriend, and her ex-boyfriend. But they make one mistake: they also invite their prep-school headmaster (played by James Stewart, who was looking for more serious roles after the War). The headmaster is one of those people who is rude because he thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and it was his philosophy that unintentionally inspired the murder.

See, our murderers feel that they belong to a class of intellectuals who have the right to kill their inferiors if they feel like it. One of them spouts his philosophy at dinner, to which the victim's father objects, noting that Hitler thought the same thing. But no, no, our killer says: he's, well, in modern parlance, an anti-Fascist.

To Stewart, the idea is completely rhetorical, and he initially and cheerfully goes along with it. Only in the end, when he begins to suspect that his rhetoric has led to actual consequences, does it break him. When you stop to think about it, any moral code not rooted in "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," leads society to dark, dark places. In his closing monolog, Stewart dismantles his old philosophy in favor of the ancient one.

If you haven't seen Rope, or not seen it recently, it's worth watching now.

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

But he doesn’t.


Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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