If you’ve ever thought to yourself: ‘they sure don’t write them like they used to’ – then this book is for you.
If you’ve ever longed to read a new, pulp-style adventure story – then this book is for you.
If you’ve ever wished someone would take up the mantle and write new adventures in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard – then this book is for you.
This book is for me.
I’ve enjoyed the Joe R. Lansdale books that I’ve read previously and was excited to get something by him that looked a little different from what I’ve read before. And not just a little bit like those great Robert E. Howard Conan books I read back in the 1970’s and 80’s.
This book is a throw-back … no … this book is an homage to the great adventure pulp fiction of the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. In his introduction, Lansdale writes about his appreciation for Burroughs, growing up on Tarzan and John Carter and Carson Napier, and Lansdale’s fondness for these stories and this style is evident by the passion he puts forth in his own stories.
One of the best stories in the collection is the title story “Dead on the Bones” in which our pulp hero boxes with the dead.
“Tarzan and the Land that Time Forgot” is every bit a Tarzan story, as if Burroughs himself had written it and combined Tarzan with the afore-mentioned Carson of Venus and John Carter of Mars.
“The Redheaded Dead” reads much like a Frederic Brown story, though it’s dedicated to Robert E. Howard.
I’ve tried going back and reading some of the old pulp fiction and have found much of it not nearly as exciting as I remembered it being. Lansdale manages to capture the feel of the genre and keeps it interesting to the modern reader as well.
This is highly recommended. It’s a collection of short fiction, and it brilliantly captures the tone of the really great adventure heroes and their stories. It’s an all-around winner.
Looking for a good book? Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire is a collection of short stories by Joe R. Lansdale that pays tribute to some of the greatest fictional heroes in adventure and fantasy literature while keeping the modern reader delightfully entertained.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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Dead on the Bones: Pulp on Fire
author: Joe R. Lansdale
publisher: Subterranean Press
ISBN: 1596067470
hardcover, 296 pages
