SHOOTOUT AT ROULEMENT RIDGE – Einer Mercier

As the owner of Kindle and being an avid reader, I subscribe to a number of daily and weekly newsletters that inform me of free and reduced-priced books. Shootout at Roulement Ridge is a book that I would have ‘purchased’ for free. But it’s easy to see what might have attracted me to the book – a western/sci-fi mash-up? That’s absolutely something I’d want to read!

Roulement Ridge is a border town in the Union of the Americas. Gun-slinging cowboys from the West face off against the savage Vikings raiders of the North. A Mayor in Roulement Ridge works hard to keep the peace.

The book has a lot of action, mostly at the expense of a good, solid story. The plot is threadbare, but this is not the sort of book one reads for a complicated plot. This is much more along the lines of a classic pulp story or an old-time dime-novel.

I was definitely hoping for more of a sci-fi/fantasy element. Simply adding Vikings to an 1800’s-style Old West story isn’t a particularly strong way of giving a story character. And the sub-title (or perhaps more accurately – the surtitle) to this book is: A Gears and Gunfighters Novel. That kind of screams ‘Steampunk’ to me, and that’s definitely what I was expecting, but there’s really nothing Steampunk about this book.

Overall – the writing is decent and I’m willing to try another in Mercier’s “Gears and Gunfighters” series (though I hope the next one will be more steampunk-y).

Looking for a good book? Shootout at Roulement Ridge by Einar Mercier, is a throwback to the days of the pulp novels – lots of action, skimpy on plot, and priced to entertain for an afternoon.