Customer Reviews

Destiny's Truth (Deathlands)

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For some reason there are three reviews of this one claiming it's Trader Redux, which was an entirely different book in the series. This one is actually "The Illuminated Ones Book II". While the entire series has basically been a guilty pleasure for those who like to mainline pure pap, the quality has occasionally been spotty since Jack Adrian passed away and Gold Eagle began using monkeys chained to typewriters to crank out the series. This installment seems to have been written by a different author than the one who turned out Amazon Gate, the first of this miniseries within the series, and in places it disappoints. Mostly this involves the heroes exhibiting a newfound tendency to stop for strategy discussions every 15 minutes or so with no regard for whether this is necessary. They do it when no one is around, and in another 15 minutes when there is still no one around, and they keep it up when they're being shot at. It is a gross understatement to say that Gold Eagle books in general, and Deathlands in particular, have never been about sparkling repartee; they are about lots of bad guys being blown away in welters of gore. In the last book, deviation from the formula paid off, but here, it just bogs everything down. I was happier with the one where they ripped the entire plot, and even the dialogue, from "the magnificent seven". Still, if you're a junkie you have to read every one.

Thats when you consider how craptacular the serise has been lately. Several points that annoy me

1. The gate women all we need in these books is another "close" group of women who can kick ass and take names.

2. Charecter development-nile no surprise there
specifically when the heck did Doc Tanner get so anti-scientific? His beef in previous books has always been agianst the specific people that trawled him out of the not pre-dark science itself.

3. Smallpox-can anyone say overused plot device

Overall-I know its kind of stupid for me to sit here debating the literary merits of men's adventure fiction a field that is never going to win any awards but it would be nice if the audience was treated with a little respect.

This book appears to be a remake of James Axler's book Trader Redux published a couple years ago. The only difference is that he has a new publisher for the same book.

Publishing this book December 2002, is apparently the same book published by someone else.

Be careful.
I could be wrong, but since I read Trader Redux a couple years ago it is probably the same book.