Pale Horse Coming

Rating:
Summary: Southern Seven Samurai
Review: Medal of Honor winner Earl Swagger recruits six top gun men to bring righteous retribution to a hell-hole called Thebes. Thebes, located in the remotest swamps of Mississippi, is a penal farm designed for the most recalcitrant black offenders. It is cut off from the outside world and no one is privy to the evil events that transpire there - except for some very powerful people in very high places. Earl Swagger gets to experience the horrors of Thebes when he becomes its first white inmate. Earl 'returns from the dead' for his 'second coming' into Thebes, but this time he's part of a band of seven avenging angels. The bad guys include a muscled, sadistic albino called 'Big Boy', a milquetoast racist warden, and a machine-gun totting guard named "Section Boss'. The warden inhabits an old, rotting mansion that's right out of William Faulkner. There's even the Faulkneresque dysfunctional family that's cursed by the sin of Racism. For all these interesting ingredients, Pale Horse Coming lacks the high-octane suspense of some Hunter's other novels. Even at his best, Hunter's work is not serious literature. If you like shoot-em-up action where Evil is put on the run, then you will enjoy Pale Horse Coming.

Rating:
Summary: Hunter does it again
Review: Having read all 11 Hunter books.....I would say this book is as good as Point of Impact. My only wish is that Hunter would write more books.

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Summary: Gunning for justice.
Review: Earl Swagger is back in action in a swampy southern hell hole mixing it up with folks that just need killing. And he goes about it with great friends and wonderful guns. Hunter seems to be the only writer that always gets the guns right and he sure puts them in the hands of some of the best this time.

Rating:
Summary: It doesn't get much better than Hunter
Review: Pale Horse Coming is excellent!! Hunter writes like Elmore Leonard on steroids. He never fails to astound me with the original story and plot. For those of you not familiar with Stephen Hunter, start reading NOW!!! Earl Swagger is one of the best characters ever to arise from modern fiction. I just hope Bob Lee comes back for another installment.

Rating:
Summary: Far from Hunter's best, but the only decent gun fiction
Review: I am a tremendous Stephen Hunter fan, and consider him to be the best writer by far covering gun-related fiction in a credible way--as a Master class competitive shooter (with the venerable Gov't 45) I'm starved for such material. Having read every other book by him that I've been able to get my hands on, however, I feel compelled to say that "Pale Horse Coming" falls well below the high marks he has previously set. Based on the other reviews, it seems people are really enjoying this book, and I'm glad they are. If you liked "Pale Horse Coming," however, I strongly encourage you to buy and read Hunter's other fiction--especially, and in no particular order, "The Master Sniper", "The Day Before Midnight", "Dirty White Boys", and "Point of Impact"--all much superior to this most recent quite good but not very credible work. (Sorry, Stephen!)

Rating:
Summary: Great Story
Review: Am I the only woman (and 67 years old, too, to read this book? As usual, I enjoyed this book by Stephen Hunter immensely. It was exciting and well written in the jargon of the day and location. I do wish someone would print a chronological list of Mr. Hunter's books. I have read them, more or less, as they were published and that is completely out of sequence chronologically. I plan to go back and read them "in order". Right now, I have a son and a daughter waiting for me to finish so they can read it. Being Thanksgiving weekend, I've had other things to do besides reading. It was worth every minute!!

Rating:
Summary: Wow - Among the Very Best
Review: If you want to get some insight into the world of "shooters" this is the book for you. Excellent story, great characters!!! Will keep you thinking long after the last page is finished. READ THIS BOOK

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Summary: Visual and visceral action!
Review: My first encounter with Stephen Hunter came with the reading of his earlier work BLACK LIGHT. This book made a deep impression on me: in particular, I was entranced by the author's evident gift for creating vivid descriptions, sparse dialogue, sharp narrative display and brilliant characters.

PALE HORSE COMING is another stunning piece of fiction. It is both a riveting tale of human suffering and an action novel. As in his earlier works, we see immediately Hunter's extremely "visual" descriptive powers and his considerable gift of the art of intricate and spell-binding story telling. The pace of the novel is unflagging and the general social issues addressed of profound importance.

The novel commences with the visceral portrayal an individual's struggle for survival against the uncommon brutality offered by the various human components of a concentration-camp ("prison") set deep in the "wilds" of post WW II Mississippi. The novel then changes pace to describe the carefully calculated and "righteous" revenge of the same individual against the sadistic figures who control the prison, the very symbol of injustice. Finally, the novel offers a well-scripted resolution with the annihilation of the prison and its various minions.

What makes this book remarkable are the various threads that are woven together to form a tight and gripping tapestry of suffering and rebellion.

Hunter employs (for the first time in his fiction) a strangely artificial but highly effective form of dialogue not unlike that used by David Mamet in his powerful screenplays.

Hunter transforms various standard "Western" plots and binds them together to create a "Super-Western" action and revenge novel.

Hunter addresses the unresolved issues of rascism in America. (His scenario of a "concentration camp" for African Americans in the 1950's is all too credible.) His scenes concerning the suppression of blacks in the American South are haunting. We read of ignorance and intolerance at their zenith.

Hunter addresses (in the context of his "ficitonal" prison) the volatile topic of scientific experimentation with human subjects, something that was fairly common in post-war America, but which still lies deep in the nation's subconscious.

The novel is a remedy (or an awakening) for those who might believe that "such things cannot happen in America".

If there is any apparent weakness in the novel, it concerns the super-human endurance of Earl Swagger, the "hero' of several previous works. In this volume, Swagger manages to survive a bevy of massive physical injuries and numberless psychological traumas and humilations only to come back all the stronger for it. At times the description of Swagger's physical and psychological resiliance seems quite fantastic and verges on comic-book caricature of human capabilities.

But it is clearly not Hunter's intention to create just another comic book super-hero. Rather, it is of more interest to view Hunter's depiction of Swagger's "miraculous" endurance at a less shallow level, namely, as the embodiment of the unflagging spirit of justice in so many men and women who refuse to bow to the "evil" in human existence.

A memorable, fast-paced, yet provocative read. Totally excellent!

Rating:
Summary: Blows You Away
Review: I am a Stephen Hunter fan but Pale Horse Coming totally exceeded all of my expectations! The plot is incredibly creative and transcends the adventure thriller genre. To say that I could not put this book down is an understatement. Hunter is one of three or four authors that I conciously look forward to each year. This is his best yet and that is saying quite a lot about the author of Dirty White Boys.

Rating:
Summary: Recipe
Review: Take the following ingredients (among others); the continuing Swagger saga, add chain gang movies, real life gunmen (most recognizable, Audie Murphy), Western movies, Greek drama and myth,samurai,guns and more guns and lots of ammo.....and you have a page turner that will keep you up late at night. Keep em coming.Thank you, Mr. Hunter.