Cover Image: The Weird Wild West

The Weird Wild West

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Member Reviews

A few of the stories in this anthology of Weird Westerns are clunkers, but overall most of them are very good. Two exceptionally good ones are “Son of the Devil” by Jonathan Maberry (a horror story that haunted me for days after I read it) and “From Parts Unknown” by James R. Tuck (truly a “Weird Tale” in the best sense of that phrase; I hope we see more stories featuring Truett McCall). Those two novelettes alone are well worth the price of the book, but there are also great stories by R. S. Belcher, John G. Hartness, Misty Massey, and Faith Hunter. Highly recommended.

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Take 17 authors, plop them down and have them write short stories. The only requirement is that the tale needs to be a Western. And thus was born The Weird Wild West anthology. There are horror westerns, a alien landing in the Old West, magic in the Old West and plenty of interesting stories. So if you hanker to ride alongside your favorite fantasy creature in the old west, read this volume and you might be in luck! Happy reading!

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This is a great collection of stories, even though not all readers will like all entries. It's just thematically That Good. All set in the Old West, or some fantastical versions thereof, they share many trappings of the genre, and variously add all sorts of supernatural creatures or occurrences. A small handful tie in with their respective authors' other work, but it's not necessary to have read that work beforehand.

Among the completely stand-alone tales, many feel like they could be part of larger frameworks -- some in a good way (i.e., worldbuilding feels thorough and I'd love to read more) and some in a bad way (i.e., worldbuilding is inadequate and I feel as though I've been dropped into the middle of something I don't understand). But if you like your westerns with a dash of the supernatural, or vice versa, you will definitely enjoy this.

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