Review: Prolific
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 02 19, 2012
I love old westerns, and I'm not too critical of them so long as they are well-written. Max Brand can write well, but there is a sameness to his word products. His heroes often tend to be introspective loners on the lam, and thus we get a strong psychological component. But, since Brand was paid by the word, there is also a tendancy toward wordiness; this, when combined with the aforementioned introspection, seems to prolong even the simplest actions.Brand wrote some good books; he was bound to writing so very much and in so many different genres. Indeed, many of his books (such as the Doctor Kildare series) are not westerns. But forced to churn out verbiage in magazine stories and short novels to make a living, too many of his tales seem perfunctory and more than a tad familiar, one to the next. And some plot devices are downright odd. That so many of hs books are as highly regarded as they are is certainly to his credit, but overall there is some hard-to-define quality (angst, perhaps?) about his western stories that doesn't particularly appeal to me; they somehow don't ring true. Nevertheless, for those who enjoy his stories, this set conveniently packages many of Brand's currently available public domain works.UPDATE 04-27-13: Wildside Press has just published a particularly well-formatted, 20-title "Max Brand Megapack" for only $.99. You will probably wish to sample both, but THAT is the one I would recommend.