Liralen's Reviews > Pale Horse Coming

Mythic and elegant and poetical in language, though deadly earnest in its violence and means of dealing with violence, this book just touched me on all kinds of levels more than just the "thriller". It seamlessly blends the myths of the Deep Dark South with that of the cowboy and fast shooters of the West, and I loved how, underlying it all was the root-stock of Oedipus' third play -- Seven Against Thebes, the same stock that upheld "The Magnificent Seven" and "Seven Samurai".

It's odd to read this before Black Light and find the younger Sam Vincent and Earl so much more in this book than they are when portrayed later on in life: more epic, but also more human, more afraid and courageous for it than in the oddly cleaner "Black Light". Here everything is far more visceral and gut-wrenching, especially in the first half of the book. I had a much harder time reading the first half than I did the second.

The moral choices Earl and Sam make are telling, and extremely hard ones, especially given the situations they go through, and I couldn't help but cheer Earl on.

I do give a lot of four stars, but not many fives. This one deserves it for the characters, the utter insanity of the situation, and later on in the utmost and loving detail of the weapons, ammunition, and gun choices of the characters involved in the second half. I love it when you can tell what a character is made of by their choices, and the choices the men make, all of their own initiative, are all telling.