THE SHOTGUN ARCANA
By R.S. Belcher
Tor Books
396 pages
One of our favorite books of last year was “The Six-Gun Tarot,”
by R.S. Belcher which we reviewed at that time as one of the most original,
audacious weird western novels ever written.
Now comes its sequel and we totally need to find new, better adjectives
worthy of this amazing follow up tale of the most haunted town on the frontier,
Golgotha, Nevada.
The Mormon mayor possesses a magical sword and golden armor
left to his father by the Prophet John Smith.
The richest man in town, Malachi Bick, is a fallen angel. The Sheriff,
Jon Hightower, was once hanged; it didn’t take and now is considered some kind
of immortal whereas his chief deputy is a shape-shifting half-breed named
Mutt. The widow Maude Stapleton is the
three times grand-daughter of the pirate queen, Ann Boney and the town
blacksmith, Clay Turlough is a frustrated scientist attempting to raise the
dead with the blood from unholy worms. These are but a handful Golgotha’s colorful citizenry. There are many more, all of whom eventually
play a role in the story’s central plot.
Raziel, another fallen angel calling himself Ray Ziel, has
come to Golgotha to find the skull of the
first mortal ever murdered. Within this
aged relic has been imprisoned the essence of destruction. Should the skull be destroyed then this
malevolent spirit would be released and infect all humans; turning them into
mindless creatures of death. This is
Raziel’s goal and to achieve it he sends out an ethereal call throughout the
world calling only the most savage, cruel, monstrous people to heed his summons
and come to Golgotha.
Thus Bick must ally himself with Sheriff Hightower and his
supernaturally gifted associates in finding a way to battle Raziel and defeat
his army of butchers before they can lay waste to the town and capture its
treasure, the possessed skull.
The action never lets up for a second and Belcher juggles
all his wonderful characters with a master’s touch, allowing each ample time
with their various subplots while moving the main narrative forward. It is an unrelenting pace and the suspense
mounts rapidly until upon reaching the final battle between good and evil, the
reader is transfixed; mesmerized in such a skillful way unable to stop until
the final page has been devoured. Weird
westerns are easily one of the most popular genres of new pulps today and no
one writes them better than R.S. Belcher.
“The Shotgun Arcana” is a fantastic book lovers of the macabre are going
to applaud long and hard. Miss this one
to your regret.
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