Death Trek

by jeffrey wallmann

To rescue a banished princess, Vantro the barbarian turns his mighty powers against the sinister Fanes!

Genres: Fantasy

172 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1980

Reviews

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sword & sorcery, though a little outside the genre mainstream. A scene where the major character bites through the neck of an attacking carrion bird might be an homage to an ERB Tarzan scene. The writing is quite good. Wallmann has a great vocabulary and a unique way of expressing himself in prose. Even the fairly frequent sex scenes are well written. This worked “against” the readability level of the story, though. Every paragraph was densely constructed with plenty of great archaic words and unique phrasings, but that keeps one from settling into the “flow” of the tale.

A couple of things didn’t work well for me. The opening didn’t really center me. The main character seems to die but is suddenly alive again. The main enemy are the “Fane,” but we never learn much about them. The plot is one thing after another, which is fine, but the main character is mostly driven from place to place by circumstances rather than taking charge of his own direction.

Worth a read and I'll seek out more of Wallmann's books based on the strength of the prose alone. I'll be covering this in more detail on my Swords & Planet page on Facebook early in December 2024.

[Egghead · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Eye of Argon
was not a singular fluke.
Death Trek is the proof.