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Six-Gun Samurai #1
Six-Gun Samurai
Book by Lee, Patrick
176 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1981
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 30, 2019
Abandoned in Japan at age 12 young Tom Fletcher is taken in and trained by a Samurai. For the next 20 years he is trained in the Way of the Warrior, the fierce code of the Samurai until he learns of the slaughter of his family back in America. Now Tom will take the weapons of ancient Japan to the States and combine them with the deadly guns of the West to track his family’s killers. Well written and full of martial arts action and Old West gun play.
July 2, 2022
12 year old Tom in Japan with the US Navy has his sleeping quarters massacred by Ninjas, swords chopping off heads and ninja stars sticking into throats and Tom is the only one to escape. After 20 years of luckily being brought up by a son less samurai, he is trained in Bushido and is now an informidable warrior. He will head to the US to extract revenge on his family that were decapitated 8 years prior. Tom now wears his hair in a topknot, brandishes two swords and will cut the hand of a man who tries to shot him, the hand severed still holding the gun and cut cleanly the head off another. While seeking revenge he will stumble upon a stage coach being pillaged and will ride in uses the sun in the background as cover. He will use his swords, stars and clumsily uses a discarded rifle for the first time. Using his samurai training he will come to the conclusion that he must master the rifle to survive and get revenge thus he uses his mind and body to become a very competent gunslinger. He will announce himself in traditional fashion before unleashing his sword in one hand and rifle in the other, he will stab the heart and send the spine out through the back like a geyser as well as slashing both arms of his enemy. Even with his handwork the Colonel, the one man he must kill will escape. Will Tom's karma allow him vengeance? This mixture is so entertaining even though the eastern philosophy is not truly accurate.
September 7, 2022
Another good example of a western book that steps out of your average western genre. Tanaka Tom Fletcher is an American that was raised in Japan. After the mission he was staying in was attacked and most killed, he is taken in by a Samurai and shown the ways. He returns to the States to avenge his families torture and murder by rouge Union soldiers. (Yeah, I know, just like 99.9% of all cowboy plots.)
This one has the advantage of the avenger slicing and dicing his prey. He does learn to shoot a mean side arm, but mostly he chops off heads and hands. This was published by Pinnacle books in the early eighties. It has an excerpt of their popular Edge serious at the end. So, if you're familiar with those books, you can guess what's coming here.
This one has the advantage of the avenger slicing and dicing his prey. He does learn to shoot a mean side arm, but mostly he chops off heads and hands. This was published by Pinnacle books in the early eighties. It has an excerpt of their popular Edge serious at the end. So, if you're familiar with those books, you can guess what's coming here.
April 16, 2019
This is the first book in the short-lived (only seven books in the series) western series Six Gun Samurai. As with most men's adventure series, the Six Gun Samurai series was written by several different authors (Mark Roberts, Patrick Andrews, and William Fieldhouse) and published under a universal pseudonym (Patrick Lee). As far as I can tell, this first entry in the series was actually penned by Patrick Andrews, who also published several western and adventure novels under his own name.
Six Gun Samurai is the origin story of "Tanaka" Tom Fletcher, a white man raised from childhood in Japan as a Samurai warrior, who returns to the American west in order to avenge his family who were massacred by Union soldiers. The book starts like your typical fish-out-of-water story, but soon becomes more focused on the action as Fletcher quickly learns to stop greeting people in Japanese and trades his kimono in for a denim vest.
Fletcher isn't the only one forced into a learning curve; Andrews isn't stingy with factual details about Fletcher's upbringing, and readers looking forward to a quick western take might not be prepared for the level of cultural education that takes up a fair amount of the book's narrative. Japanese and Spanish glossaries are even provided at the end of the book to help readers along with their comprehension homework.
But all study and no vengeance makes Tanaka Tom a dull samurai, so rest assured there is plenty of violence in between historical Japanese flashbacks and dream sequences. Fletcher's path to vengeance leads to Colonel Edward Hollister and his regiment of former soldier outlaws, who have been doing their fair share of looting and pillaging both during and after the war. Fletcher's run-ins with Hollister's gang members and other random marauders are always bloody affairs, with Fletcher's samurai swordplay bisecting torsos and severing limbs and heads alike, all in graphic detail.
The outlaws are just as brutal, although they make up for their lack of acrobatic vivisectionist skills with a sadistic inventiveness when it comes to torturing and (eventually) killing innocent prospectors and farmers. And let's not forget the rape. Oh yes, they rape a lot, especially children. In fact, child rape is used repeatedly throughout the book as a gauge of just how evil a bad guy is, although thankfully it isn't graphically described like the murder and torture.
Six Gun Samurai has everything one would want from a serial adventure western, including truly villainous bad guys, a unique loner hero, and hefty amounts of western flavor and violent gore, even if some western fans may find themselves skimming over a page or two of Japanese cultural refresher course.
On a side note, my paperback edition of Six Gun Samurai includes an excerpt from the first book in the western series Edge, which is another series written under a pseudonym, in this case Terry Harknett writing under the name of George G. Gilman.
Six Gun Samurai is the origin story of "Tanaka" Tom Fletcher, a white man raised from childhood in Japan as a Samurai warrior, who returns to the American west in order to avenge his family who were massacred by Union soldiers. The book starts like your typical fish-out-of-water story, but soon becomes more focused on the action as Fletcher quickly learns to stop greeting people in Japanese and trades his kimono in for a denim vest.
Fletcher isn't the only one forced into a learning curve; Andrews isn't stingy with factual details about Fletcher's upbringing, and readers looking forward to a quick western take might not be prepared for the level of cultural education that takes up a fair amount of the book's narrative. Japanese and Spanish glossaries are even provided at the end of the book to help readers along with their comprehension homework.
But all study and no vengeance makes Tanaka Tom a dull samurai, so rest assured there is plenty of violence in between historical Japanese flashbacks and dream sequences. Fletcher's path to vengeance leads to Colonel Edward Hollister and his regiment of former soldier outlaws, who have been doing their fair share of looting and pillaging both during and after the war. Fletcher's run-ins with Hollister's gang members and other random marauders are always bloody affairs, with Fletcher's samurai swordplay bisecting torsos and severing limbs and heads alike, all in graphic detail.
The outlaws are just as brutal, although they make up for their lack of acrobatic vivisectionist skills with a sadistic inventiveness when it comes to torturing and (eventually) killing innocent prospectors and farmers. And let's not forget the rape. Oh yes, they rape a lot, especially children. In fact, child rape is used repeatedly throughout the book as a gauge of just how evil a bad guy is, although thankfully it isn't graphically described like the murder and torture.
Six Gun Samurai has everything one would want from a serial adventure western, including truly villainous bad guys, a unique loner hero, and hefty amounts of western flavor and violent gore, even if some western fans may find themselves skimming over a page or two of Japanese cultural refresher course.
On a side note, my paperback edition of Six Gun Samurai includes an excerpt from the first book in the western series Edge, which is another series written under a pseudonym, in this case Terry Harknett writing under the name of George G. Gilman.
May 30, 2021
I read this (or maybe another in the series) back in the 80s and remembered enjoying it, so thought I’d pick up again. It’s very much of its time - a mash up of Shogun and Kung Fu that’s bloodily entertaining and full of pulpy goodness.
December 28, 2023
Six-Gun Samurai is a short and relatively entertaining book, but one I don't think is suited to modern audiences. There's obviously a thread of Orientalism that runs through the whole thing, which I suppose was more common at the time this was written (1981) but I suspect most audiences today would cringe at.
I just want to take an aside to note that I do consume a lot of schlock, usually in the cinematic realm, and I'm not opposed to exploitation films and the ninja movies of the 80's. I think a big part of why this book rubbed me the wrong way was that while it's clear Lee is a bit of a history buff (at least when it comes to Western firearms and Japanese military history), the way he presented Japanese things was kind of weird. It was always like, "he put on his _gehtas_, his wooden sandals, and stepped out." The clumsy use of Japanese terms (which in many cases are misspelled or poorly consteucted - "Ichi biru kudasai" instead of "Biru wo ippai kudasai", "saki" instead of "sake", "dom arigato" instead of "doumo", and many more) felt like he was trying to show that he knew his stuff, but came up short. And did a lot of Orientalization while depicting feudal Japan. Anyway, back to the content.
There was a lot of portrayal of racism of the kind you'd find in the Old West, which I was fine with (the portrayal, not the racism). But the way one of the non-white characters was depicted kind of felt like a caricature to me. I wasn't sure whether Lee was trying to emulate the way a pulp story would flatten "ethnic" characters into stereotypes or whether he just writes that way.
The sex scene felt like it came a bit out of left-field and you guessed it, had more Asian mysticism. There was also a lot more sexual violence than I was expecting going in.
This was the first "Western" novel I've read and I'm not sure if some of the things I disliked came down to genre conventions or the author's choices. If you can get past the egregious Orientalism and sexual violence, you have yourself an interesting and somewhat silly fish-out-of-water swashbuckler story that you can finish in an afternoon. Still, I don't think I'll be reading the other entries in the series.
I just want to take an aside to note that I do consume a lot of schlock, usually in the cinematic realm, and I'm not opposed to exploitation films and the ninja movies of the 80's. I think a big part of why this book rubbed me the wrong way was that while it's clear Lee is a bit of a history buff (at least when it comes to Western firearms and Japanese military history), the way he presented Japanese things was kind of weird. It was always like, "he put on his _gehtas_, his wooden sandals, and stepped out." The clumsy use of Japanese terms (which in many cases are misspelled or poorly consteucted - "Ichi biru kudasai" instead of "Biru wo ippai kudasai", "saki" instead of "sake", "dom arigato" instead of "doumo", and many more) felt like he was trying to show that he knew his stuff, but came up short. And did a lot of Orientalization while depicting feudal Japan. Anyway, back to the content.
There was a lot of portrayal of racism of the kind you'd find in the Old West, which I was fine with (the portrayal, not the racism). But the way one of the non-white characters was depicted kind of felt like a caricature to me. I wasn't sure whether Lee was trying to emulate the way a pulp story would flatten "ethnic" characters into stereotypes or whether he just writes that way.
The sex scene felt like it came a bit out of left-field and you guessed it, had more Asian mysticism. There was also a lot more sexual violence than I was expecting going in.
This was the first "Western" novel I've read and I'm not sure if some of the things I disliked came down to genre conventions or the author's choices. If you can get past the egregious Orientalism and sexual violence, you have yourself an interesting and somewhat silly fish-out-of-water swashbuckler story that you can finish in an afternoon. Still, I don't think I'll be reading the other entries in the series.
December 5, 2016
Very enjoyable book about Tom Fletcher, born in Georgia but raised as a son by a Samurai in Japan. He returns to America to obtain revenge upon the killers of his family. East meets West as he starts to use a pistol along with his Katana. After book one the chase continues
November 11, 2021
This was written by Patrick Andrews from Wichita, Kansas as a collaboration. Certainly one of the most interesting takes on the Eastern/Western fiction genre out there.
March 1, 2016
Well..this was bought for me by a loved one who knows of my Jidaigeki (Samurai movie) obsession and general interest in Japan. The cover screams B grade kooky Western so I gave it a go. It delivered some reasonably creative passages but reeked of..well.. not really knowing a lot about Japan . The author tries hard in a pre-internet way to add real flavour from second hand research. It's obviously inspired by Red Sun (Mifune and Bronson) and Clavell's Shogun. The Japanese romaji spelling is oddly truncated at times. Biggest linguistic faux pas is when the Samurai (a Daimyo no less) meets an old Chinese gent who "seemed overjoyed at coming upon someone who spoke a language near enough to his own to be familiar"...ahh..No..sorry.
Chinese and Japanese - shared pictograms, VERY different languages.
Some really ugly rape and violence against women and kids a couple of times sort of took the edge off my enjoyment of the kookiness of the concept.
Samurai's name - Tanaka Tom..odd like the whole book.
Still maybe I will get the next volume and fingers crossed he has watched a few more Kurosawa flicks and talked to some actual Japan experts.
Idea has promise, sort of a Kwai Chang Caine premise with a rich Gaijin Nihonjin Kenshin rather than a poor runaway Gwailoh Chinese 'Shaolin'.
Chinese and Japanese - shared pictograms, VERY different languages.
Some really ugly rape and violence against women and kids a couple of times sort of took the edge off my enjoyment of the kookiness of the concept.
Samurai's name - Tanaka Tom..odd like the whole book.
Still maybe I will get the next volume and fingers crossed he has watched a few more Kurosawa flicks and talked to some actual Japan experts.
Idea has promise, sort of a Kwai Chang Caine premise with a rich Gaijin Nihonjin Kenshin rather than a poor runaway Gwailoh Chinese 'Shaolin'.
August 19, 2012
This one was so ridiculous in premise that it worked for me. The author obviously did do some research on Japanese culture as some of the stuff reminds me of the kid's karate classes.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews