Book Review

Jason dinAlt Goes Interdimensional

Sword of the Bright Lady (WORLD OF PRIME Book 1) by M.C. Planck

The character of Christopher Sinclair, mechanical engineer from Arizona, dropped into a world where magic works and rank is the most important aspect of society, is fascinating. He’s blunt, often clueless, and yet very intelligent and a determined personality. He reminds me of Jason dinAlt, if Jason didn’t know anything about subterfuge or manipulation. And Christopher’s current world is every bit as dangerous as any of Jason’s Deathworlds, though people and politics are more the drivers than the monsters are.


In a world where people can be brought back to life when nothing of them is left but their heads, and the gods are real, Christopher uses his engineering knowledge to level the playing field for himself – actions that affect larger and larger groups of people as he focuses on finding a way back to his wife, Maggie. He’s no kid; he’s forty and not used to the active life of someone who frequently finds himself embroiled in battles or duels. The idea of killing another human being – even if they DO have the possibility of being brought back – makes him ill, but he has his black belt in kendo, and he didn’t find his soulmate until his late 30s, and he’ll do whatever it takes to get back to her, including signing on as the priest of a god he never guessed existed.


It’s absorbing to learn, as he does, what this world is all about, and to shake your head over his cluelessness when it comes to people and politics. For him, rationality and logic are nearly everything, and it’s fascinating to see how he accomplishes what he sets out to do when he’s at such a disadvantage.


The first ebook was a bargain (as #1 books in a series can be), but subsequent books sell at nearly $10. When I started the book I scoffed at the idea that I might be willing to pay so much for each of the successive ebooks in the series (#3 is the latest). But as soon as I finished the last sentence, I was plunking down my money for book #2.

The Master Executioner by Loren D. Estleman

The Master ExecutionerThe Master Executioner by Loren D. Estleman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These days it is popular to tell people to work and what they love and success will be sure to follow. The Master Executioner is about a man who takes this advice and its impact on his life.

This is not my grandfather’s western. It is a modern novel that happens to take place in the years just after the Civil War and before the turn of the century, when people were migrating in hordes from east to west and industrial innovations were happening so fast the landscape could change from year to year.

Oscar Stone is a pragmatist. After abandoning his father’s farm and serving in the Union army during the war, he decides to leave the east completely and travel to Missouri. He reasons that with a building boom going on, carpenters will be in short supply, so he apprentices and becomes an excellent carpenter. From his master he receives advice, which he takes to heart about being a craftsman and being meticulous and knowledgeable about your work. During his last months in the war, he sees a lynching, badly handled, and this affects him profoundly.

While apprenticed, Oscar meets a young woman and applies his formidable honesty and persistence in winning over her reluctant father and they take a wagon train west. But they are late to the party. There is a surfeit of carpenters and Oscar has a hard time finding work. Finally, he takes a temporary job building a gallows and meets Rudd, a master hangman. Rudd tells Oscar the young man has a gift and would likely make an excellent hangman. It is steady employment, and best of all, a chance to experience satisfaction in a job well done. Rudd offers to teach him everything he knows, and eventually, over his own misgivings, and his wife’s flat opposition, Oscar becomes the hangman’s apprentice. It is an experience and occupation that is both more satisfying and more unforgiving than he could ever have expected. He loses his wife over it and the majority of the book covers his subsequent career and attempts to locate her.

This is not a book of self-examination. Though generally more honest with himself than most people, Oscar Stone is not that kind of man. And Estleman deliberately confines himself to Oscar’s actions and conversations, leaving it open about what the man actually feels which makes it ironically easier to understand him.

Though the novel is full of criminals, each walks the stage for a short time only, which makes it all the more remarkable that Estleman’s clear writing can make them all so human and mostly pitiable. Oscar, however, remains the star, a man of neat habits who looks more like a banker than a hangman, a problem-solver, and a man who takes pride in providing each client with a swift and painless death.

Eventually Oscar finds his wife again and once more his life is altered permanently. The ending is one of those which seems inevitable and is therefore satisfying, but you don’t anticipate it because Estleman’s writing is like setting yourself afloat in a briskly moving creek – you go with the flow and are content to do so. In their ways, so did Rudd the hangman, and his apprentice Oscar Stone.

Historical novels about the old west are not a usual choice for me, but the subject and the sample I read made me want more so I bought the book. I am very glad I did.

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