Every Thursday I share a list of free spectulative fiction books on Twitter. Last April, My friend Berthold Gambrel reviewed one of the books I mentioned, and now I’m reviewing it as well! Thank you for reviewing this book and nudging it closer to the top of my to-read list, Berthold!
Title: Bounty Hunter Stex
Author: Vesa Turpeinen
Publisher: Self-Published
Publication Date: April 1, 2021
Genres: Science Fiction
Length: 23 pages
Source: I received a free copy from the author.
Rating: 3 Stars
Blurb:
Bounty Hunter Stex crashes his small plane hundreds of miles away from civilization while transporting a prisoner.
Stex and his prisoner end up face to face with an ancient evil as they look for shelter from a godforsaken ghost town in the middle of a desert.
This story is written by the award-winning author of the Amazon best-selling Pilot Career Series, Vesa Turpeinen. While he is widely recognized in the non-fiction world, this is his first attempt at writing fiction ”” and it won’t leave you cold!
The story combines science fiction, western, and magic, plus a little bit of Stephen King-style horror. It’s only about a 10-minute read and distributed for free. Enjoy!
Review:
Content Warning: Blood and murder. I will not be discussing these things in my review.
The less you know about this tale in advance, the better!
I adored the creative plot twists. As mentioned above, this is one of those stories that works best if you avoid all spoilers for it ahead of time. That’s going to make it a little tricky to discuss and critique here, but I’m always up for a challenge. The coolest things about these plot twists were how often they happened and how many different genres they invited into the storyline in order to make everything tie together. I was surprised on a few different occasions, but everything was tied up beautifully together in the end.
This would have benefitted from another round of editing. The typos and punctuation errors happened often enough for me to give this a much lower rating than I otherwise would have chosen. It was distracting to pause and read those sections again to make sure I understood what the narrator was trying to communicate. With that being said, the plot itself was excellent. I am hoping to read more from this author in the future as his writing style was otherwise delightful.
The dialogue was nicely written. None of the characters were the sorts of folks who stand around shooting the breeze. I quickly learned that all of them had a strong preference to get to the point and then immediately figure out what to do next, so it made perfect sense that they’d keep their conversations to a minimum and plainly say what they were thinking when they did decide to speak up. Writing it that was a sensible decision, and I honestly wouldn’t have wanted those parts of their personalities to be communicated in any other way.
Bounty Hunter Stex was a wild romp through multiple genres. Do give it a shot if you love westerns, science fiction, or simply being surprised by clever storytelling.
Stex Freeman – MC. Bounty Hunter.
Lucas the Slayer – bad guy he just captured and is taking in.
Title: Terror Beneath Cactus Flats (A Weird Western)