The Unkillable Frank Lightning

Trade paperback

Sprache: English

Am 15. Juli 2025 von Tachyon veröffentlicht.

ISBN:: 978-1-61696-436-8

(1 Rezension)

Catherine Coldbridge is a complicated woman: A doctor, an occultist, and, briefly, a widow.

In 1879, Private Frank Humble, Catherine’s husband, was killed in a Sioux attack. Consumed by grief, she used her formidable skills to resurrect him. But Frank lost his soul after the reanimation, and disappeared after a killing spree. Unable to face her failure and its murderous consequences, Catherine fled to grieve.

Twenty-five years later, Catherine has decided she must make things right. She travels back to Texas with a pair of hired killers ready to destroy Frank. But Frank has remade himself as the Unkillable Frank Lightning, traveling with the Wild West Show.

Reaching for a last chance at redemption, Frank and Catherine are at an impasse. As time runs out, their final choices may result in considerable bloodshed.

3 Auflagen

Phil in SF hat The Unkillable Frank Lightning von Josh Rountree besprochen

Violence in the Wild West is trauma

4 Sterne

A damn fine follow-up to The Legend of Charlie Fish. Rountree says in the afterword that he has a series of monster stories set in the Wild West in mind. I hadn't seen Charlie Fish as The Creature from the Black Lagoon when I read it, but that's the inspiration. This is Frankenstein in a Wild West Revue. Where my takeaways from Charlie Fish were a sense of place and longing for a family, Frank Lightning is the tragedy, trauma, and perhaps inevitability of violence.

Catherine Coldbridge is both a doctor and something like a witch. Two weeks after marrying Frank Humble in Montana in 1879, he is ambushed while on patrol for the U.S. Army. Distraught and heedless of the consequences, Catherine stitches him together from battlefield body parts and uses magick to bring him back to life. In a soulless, monstrous rage, he kills and Catherine flees. …

A damn fine follow-up to The Legend of Charlie Fish. Rountree says in the afterword that he has a series of monster stories set in the Wild West in mind. I hadn't seen Charlie Fish as The Creature from the Black Lagoon when I read it, but that's the inspiration. This is Frankenstein in a Wild West Revue. Where my takeaways from Charlie Fish were a sense of place and longing for a family, Frank Lightning is the tragedy, trauma, and perhaps inevitability of violence.

Catherine Coldbridge is both a doctor and something like a witch. Two weeks after marrying Frank Humble in Montana in 1879, he is ambushed while on patrol for the U.S. Army. Distraught and heedless of the consequences, Catherine stitches him together from battlefield body parts and uses magick to bring him back to life. In a soulless, monstrous rage, he kills and Catherine flees. 25 years later, she attempts to right the wrong by killing him, for which she has hired the brothers Dawson, men not afraid to kill.

Be ready for a lot of horror-movie-level violence. Unlike many Westerns, the violence takes its toll. On everyone. On Catherine especially. Also on Frank, Catherine's first love Louisa, the Dawsons... everyone. This is bloody and traumatic. Not a wilting flower, Catherine is nevertheless consumed with the psychic effect of violence.

Quite good! Not as good as Charlie Fish, but I'm still giving it four stgars.

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Passes the "Bechdel Test"