Beginning in 1983, prolific author William W. Johnstone created the first of 35 installments in his Out of the Ashes series of post-apocalyptic men's action-adventure novels. The eponymous debut introduced hero Ben Raines and his resistance to a socialist regime in the wake of a devastating nuclear war. One year after the debut, Zebra published the subsequent entry titled Fire in the Ashes.
After Ben's downfall at the end of the series debut, the country has become an enslaved population under an ultra left-winged police state. Two mercenaries, Cody and Lowry, are sodomizing, gang raping and torturing any resistance. The author spends a great deal of time describing graphic, grotesque torture sequences involving Ben's girlfriend, a reporter and her young daughter. In fact, nearly the first 350-pages of the novel is Ben roaming the countryside while sex torture permeates the nation. Weird.
Without ruining the story, the government's military eventually starts backing Ben and the resistance which leads to the inevitable nomination of Ben Raines as the new President. Once a plague reduces the nation's population, the dead corpses attract armies of rats. There's also gigantic mutant boys...like the mutated six-year old that Ben is forced to fight in the book's disappointing finale.
Look, the post-apocalypse fiction of the 80s and 90s comes in all shapes and sizes. There's something for everyone. Out of the Ashes, based on my two experiences, isn't anything remotely interesting or engaging for readers to explore. If you like the political intrigue and pawn maneuvering that doomsday provokes, then by all means this book, and series, might excite you. I've never had any desire to pursue any other books in the series.
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William W. Johnstone was a prolific author that wrote across multiple genres in the 80s and 90s. While known mostly for westerns in his Last Mountain Man series, and it's many offshoots, the author created a long line of post-apocalyptic books called Out of the Ashes. The series ran 35 books and was spun-off into one additional series called The Last Rebel that managed one book release before Johnstone's passing. The thriving Johnstone estate, which continues to release monthly titles through a revolving door of authors, chose not to pursue any further entries in the series.
The first book of the series, aptly titled Out of the Ashes, was released in 1983 by Zebra. The series had a tremendous following and surely this debut entry was a runaway hit for Zebra considering series longevity. In it, the end of the world begins with a treacherous double-cross within the Washington D.C. brass. The political upheaval eventually turns to force and nuclear bombs begin falling like rain. Most of the US's most populated cities are decimated. However, 5,000 militia were privy to intelligence and prepared for the inevitable bombing. After the dust settles, they emerge from hiding and become a force known as The Rebels. In an effort to become a right-winged government superpower, they learn that the default new president, Logan, declares that the “new” America adopt military socialism. The Rebels then become true Rebels by fighting back against President Logan's new regime and his ruthless aggression.
The series protagonist is Ben Raines, a Vietnam War veteran who later went on to be a mercenary in Africa and did a lot of wetwork. Afterwards, he retired to Louisiana where he slouched on Scotch and wrote a bunch of pulp fiction. Ironically, on the day the bombs fell, Raines ends up getting stung by yellow jackets and falls down with an allergic reaction. This saves him somehow from the nuclear attack. When he wakes up several days later he realizes the apocalypse occurred. The author then spends pages and pages on Raines traveling the country writing notes about doomsday while getting laid a lot. Eventually, Ben becomes involved with the Rebels and decides to lead the forces against President Logan.
Unlike Johnstone's western series', Out of the Ashes is incredibly graphic. There's an abundance of torture, rape and sadistic villains threatening to sodomize any resistance. The over-the-top sex reminded me of David Alexander's Phoenix series. I think it was just there for shock value and didn't necessarily expand the story or develop characters. Needless to say, I'm not a fan of this book. About halfway through the novel I pondered what made this series sell and how it could have possibly attracted so many consumers. The political maneuvering and counter intelligence devoured most of the book's narrative. In terms of action, only the last 15-pages were worthy.
The end result – Out of the Ashes was simply out of ideas.
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The previous "M.I.A. Hunter" titles by house name Jack Buchanan were written by Stephen Mertz and Mike Newton. The share ration between the two is anyone's guess. However, with book three, "Hanoi Deathgrip", the talented journeyman Joe Lansdale ("Batman", "Jonah Hex") steps up. Newton/Mertz were great. Lansdale is awesome.
We start where any action tale worth it's salt begins - a brothel. Texan Hog Wiley is throwing bodies out of windows and tearing up the cathouse like a rat on a cheeto. Luckily, Terrance Louglin and Mark Stone arrive to grag Hog and head out for another jungle excursion. But first, we get an obligatory flashback from the author. Combat reporter Jackie Winslow shows up looking like an 80's Kathleen Turner. She's at Mark Stone's private eye firm to beg for his assistance in rescuing her father from Vietnam. Major/Dr. Winslow was captured doing some volunteer medical work in Laos. Stone and Winslow have a little attraction that Stone dismisses later. Anyhoo, Stone finds that the ISA has targeted his home and attempted to steal a bunch of his files. He turns over a van and gets them all back in an early scene.
The three main characters do the normal song and dance of the series. They meet with some freedom fighters to thicken up the gun-soup and head into the jungle for the rescue. In the meantime, Lansdale introduces us to the captive Winslow and some other Americans that are being held at the prison camp. Winslow is getting brutalized by the cruel camp commander Po. This guy is pretty much the cookie-cutter of the prior series' commander villains. Lansdale does descriptive work with more gritty, albeit grizzly, details than his predecessors. The harsh treatment is depicted with no holds barred. The snake scene left me disgusted to say the least.
Our non-profit heroes are meeting by the river to scrape on some black goo and waterpoof the goods. There they find that Jackie has joined them in full fatigues and combat get-up. She's ready for a fight. Hog loses his temper and refuses to fight side by side with a woman. But once Jackie proves she can shoot straight and ride a horse Hog is fine with it. Fast forward past the near drowning, the snake viper fight (second book in a row that has Stone vs Snake by the way) and we are in the middle of a Jean Claude Van-Damne tournament fighter movie.
Po's brother is a fat brute named Tho. Turns out Tho likes to duke it out and squash people half his size. Po has a giant battleground pit inside the camp and throws prisoners in for Tho to digest. Tho kills off three guys at once, which proves that a Hog vs Tho contest is surely coming. But before that, Winslow knows that he is the next food for Tho's ghastly combat diet. He wants to break out on the same night Stone wants to break in.
Winslow's break-out attempt is quickly squashed by Po and the two square off in a deadly torture session. Before Winslow expires Stone blows the gate off and our boys and girl are ready to gun it up. The group lights up the M-60 guard towers and soon this book comes down to the meat and potatoes. Hog vs Tho, strong man vs strong man. As the whole camp comes under fire, the two have a epic battle. How do they get back to the US? Where does Winslow go? Can he get back into the country? These are all excellent questions that the 'M.I.A. Hunter' series never has really time to answer.
End result? Lansdale creates a gritty and uber-violent tale that shows Stone doing what he does best. Shooting snakes and Cong with CAR-15s. That's what we came for, right? 'M.I.A. Hunter' is built on these types of stories and "Hanoi Deathgrip" fits right in. It has a little bit of everything albeit a bit predictable and dated looking back. Lansdale returns again to the series in future books.
"Ground Zero" is the second release in the 'Phoenix' line written by David Alexander and released in 1987 via Leisure. Phoenix (real name Magnus Trench) is currently an attorney, formerly a Vietnam vet and is vacationing alone in California when the US goes total nuclear devastation. He survives because he has goes into a cave to avoid the bomb, radiation and this strange Russian virus they have plagued Earth with. His wife and son are on the East coast so Phoenix is out to search for them across the American wasteland. He makes it into LA where he learns that only after three months since the nuke that the entire US military is gone. So are the cops and all semblance of law and order. Instead factions have arose and most people have dropped their first and last names and gone with cool monikers like "Uber Ballsack" or "Banana Dong". Magnus Trench becomes Phoenix. Phoenix learns there are the Contams, folks that have the Russian viral stuff. He also learns there is a New World Order called SCORF who have targeted him due to his immunity to the virus. All of the above is ultimately book one.
Phoenix and teen prostitute September Song part ways somewhere between LA and Las Vegas, leaving Phoenix in a little town called Trinity in the opening pages. He gets into a gun fight and gets rescued by a midget named Big Wally. Adorable. Big Wally and Phoenix head into Las Vegas where the Sheik runs the show and controls everything. The author takes a lot of liberties with the character and that's a bit frustrating for the reader. Phoenix can walk into a shop and they just hand him awesome guns and loads of ammo. No one rides for free - except Magnus Trench. He gets everything for free because he survived the bomb in a cave. It turns out that it's Murder Weekend or something in Las Vegas. The Sheik has his road games where contestants battle in fast cars toting huge guns like 'Deathrace 2000'. It's only a matter of time before our boy Trench gets to meet The Sheik.
Apparently, the Sheik needs a new contestant to represent his faction so Trench gets a sweet ride called Death Wings. After some hanky panky stuff, and there is a lot, Phoenix enters the death race thingy and of course he can outrun everyone. He mops the track up with the clowns and then notices all of these troops and planes trying to shoot him down. Phoenix is outrunning a fighter jet in a car. He ends up wrecking and falling into another cave. Here's where the author just goes bonkers with this stuff. Inside the cave is a sex cult that feel they can escape Earth during orgasm. At one point Phoenix watches the ultimate of orgies go down and, in his infinite wisdom, asks when it can be his turn. Phoenix quickly learns that he is going to have to escape the caves due to an army of attacking orcs. He chooses to resurface only to fight it out with SCORF. Phoenix, using a small arsenal meets the SCORF baddies in an abandoned town in pulp western style.
'Phoenix' in general is just simply awful. It's gun porn before pages and pages of porn. I mean every single male character is essentially running around just trying to find something to mate with. Alexander spends painful amounts of detail on guns and calibers only to completely get them wrong. I've checked his firearms and the calibers don't match. But this is trivial, yet just explains how bad this really is. If you are looking for all volumes of this series you can purchase them in digital format at Amazon. You owe it to yourself to at least pick the whole series up for a measly $10 and just poke fun at what is essentially some of the worst fiction ever created.
It's 1971 in South Vietnam and our boy Sergeant Mark Stone is out on patrol in the green slimy filth hunting some Cong. AK fire rips up the night and shreds the silence like a steel cleaver. Stone guns them down but almost gets killed in the process. Who's there to fetch his tail from the hot winds of Hell? His drinking buddy and RTO SP4 Jess Lynch. After Lynch saves Stone's butt he tells him "You owe me one". Later, it is presumed that Lynch is killed in action and a letter is sent to his family from Uncle Sam.
Fast forward to present day 1985 and Stone is on a mission with his guys Hog Wiley and Terrance Loughlin to free some prisoners. Instead, Stone royally screws up and shockingly kills every prisoner in an explosion. Stone, down and dismayed, is in Bangkok doing a little gun business. He gets a visit from a deep CIA guy named Carruthers who forces Stone to a house in the city. By force I mean, "come with me or we will shoot your face off". Stone fights back and then eventually goes with the goons.
At the house he finds that the CIA operatives are keeping a US prisoner of war on a dirty cot, malnourished and dying. The prisoner escaped his jungle Hell after thirteen plus years and was picked up. The CIA has no intention of helping the guy and doesn't want to admit to a US public that they dropped the ball on guys left behind. The prisoner tells Stone that Jess Lynch is still alive and is being held captive in Cambodia. This makes Stone furious and he has quite the little skirmish with Carruthers and his men. Fast forward a day and Stone is picking up guns and supplies from his dealer and ready to hit the jungle for a shoot'em up. Carruthers gets in the way and Stone runs him off the road and escapes.
Stone, Hog, Lough and a handful of mercenaries for hire are in Cambodia outside the camp where Lynch is being held along with twenty or more US P.O.W.s. Instead of doing some more surveillance work and having an actual plan, Stone decides to approach the camp and - get this - crawl through a sewer pipe and enter the camp through a ton of human feces. It almost works. After slicing the head off a King Cobra with a knife he manages to walk right up to the cages and get captured by the enemy. What's with all this "Cambodian Hellhole" talk? Well Stone is about to find out.
Our boy gets hung up like a bat and then gets the bat treatment. Stone gets nearly clubbed to death while the commander, Nguyen Ngu, goes on and on about confessing his real reasoning for entering the camp. Stone refuses to break so they light his foot on fire with a Zippo. Stone gets dropped in a cage next to his old buddy Jess Lynch, who looks and sounds like he is approaching death's door. If a good nightly beating isn't enough, Stone awakens to find that all the prisoners including himself are going into the mines to dig for gold all day. That's what I love to do on my day off. Eat soggy rice, succumb to a hefty beating and then go lug rocks out of a dark cave for twelve hours. Brutal.
Hog and Loughlin plan the attack perfectly, blow the bridge and bring Hellish fire and thunder onto the camp. The book's finale was a graphic exercise in violent expression. Overall, it was a decent read, plenty of action at the beginning, a short nod off in the middle but finished up with a solid ten pages of kill 'em all. Throw the snake in there, that CIA bullshit and a Zippo to the foot and you've got the makings of a real slobberknocker.
The fifth book for what should be referred to as the "Smoke Jensen" series is "Journey of the Mountain Man". As I alluded to in the last book review, "Revenge of the Mountain Man", the whole idea of "mountain man" is sort of lost by the author. This Colorado rancher is more just a skilled fast-draw gunfighter with the ability to ride, shoot straight and speak the truth. I think I would have liked this series to be more like the first book but based on the state of affairs here it doesn't seem like that will happen. As the series continues, Smoke has become the larger than life six-shooting hero that literally kills everything printed on the page.
In "Journey of the Mountain Man", Smoke receives word that his cousin Fae, whom he has never met, is stuck in the middle of two range wars in Montana. One side is owned by a crooked rancher named Dooley Hanks, who borders on lunacy with his vile plans to own a robust portion of Montana. The other side is owned by a wealthy land owner named McCorkle, who is really just a nice guy who just wants to peacefully ranch. Fae Jensen is stuck in the middle with portions of her land being infringed upon by Hanks' wranglers. She's on the verge of land rape and she's asking for Smoke's help.
The whole "journey" bit is lost. Smoke really just rides over to his cousin's house and starts shooting. Smoke soon finds himself with allies in both Fae and his cousin Parnell along with McCorkle and his hands. The enemy is a cookie-cutter one and Hanks does the typical house burning, cattle-thieving and staffing to harass both McCorkle and the Jensens.
Obviously, Smoke handles the issues with both barrels blazing and another obligatory series entry is complete. Dooley Hanks is just cut-and-paste from prior villains in this series and honestly I can't even tell them apart at this point. Potter, Stratton, Richards, Hanks, Yosemite Freakin' Sammy...it's just all the same. However, it was interesting to read more about Smoke's family in Fae and Parnell. The Parnell addition added much needed humor to the tale and hopefully the character will appear again in the series. Overall, this one was violent, gritty and action packed in true Johnstone style. One of the better ones of the first five books even when you consider the utter nonsense of it all.
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The fourth book in the 'Last Mountain Man' series, "Revenge of the Mountain Man", centers on that age old formula - avenging the death or injury of a spouse. Over the course of the first three books, Smoke's reputation as quick draw gun-fighter has caught up with him numerous times. Every fast draw, gambler and adrenaline junkie is gunning for Smoke and wants the gold ticket to Hollywood that comes with a fresh corpse.
Johnstone's narrative introduces a few unwanted guests at Smoke's Sugarloaf ranch. It's evident they want the fame and fortune from killing the famed gun-slinger (which oddly isn't a mountain man at all). Unfortunately, Smoke is away selling cattle and his wife Sally takes the violent hit. She's shot three times but the doctors patch her up - with boiling water and rags (important ingredients in western culture!). Smoke sends her back home to her family in the East, but not before learning she is pregnant with the couple's first child.
Smoke discovers that the killers are from a desert Babylon in the Southwest. Using a bit of detective work, Smoke goes into the barbaric town playing a fool - he dresses like an eccentric artist and takes numerous beatings from the book's bully and outlaw extras. But, dressing like a fool and sacrificing a few ribs allows him the opportunity to scout out the town's cronies. He soon teams up with a US Marshall and the two devise a detailed plan to tree the criminals while liberating hundreds of prisoners held by the town kingpin.
The author provides another traditional western tale but takes a less common approach by weakening the hero purposefully. The fist fights are inevitable, which just leads to gun battles and a lot of anticipation knowing Smoke will turn the tables and fight back - eventually. The addition of a few allies helped flesh the book out a bit. Plus, the series becomes a little more dynamic by introducing Sally's wealthy family and some of her backstory.
Overall, the action mirrors events that happened in prior books - Smoke arrives in town, scouts it, attacks everything and then leaves. Plus, the amount of bar fights and their outcomes are easily predictable. Almost every Johnstone scene in a bar is just an excuse for a gunfight or brawl. Why can't a man just get snozzled in the suds without a bunch of grief?
"Revenge of the Mountain Man" is just another good western, take it or leave it. You can buy a copy of the book HERE.
