Five Broken Winchesters by Brian Panowich

Five Broken Winchesters Reviews

• 
  Charles van Buren

  What is the guy on the cover looking at?, December 6, 2016
  
  This review is from: Five Broken Winchesters (Kindle Edition)
  
  I don't read fiction looking for errors but several in these stories just jumped out at me beginning with the first story, Red December, 1878, in which the main character, Harmon, laments not having brought his Henry rifle as it is tougher than the Winchester. Silly. The Henry is a Winchester. The Model 1866 Winchester which followed the Henry is an improved, more reliable Henry. The Model 1873 Winchester is a much improved new design available in more and better calibers than the Henry. Did the author get his firearms info from one of the bad movies or television programs of the 1950's? Of maybe he has confused the modern Henry Repeating Arms Company with the civil war era Henry.
  In the same story, Harmon takes refuge in a cave without making sure that he has not stumbled into a predators den. Yep, he has entered the snow beast's larder. At an earlier point in the fight with the beasts, Harmon finds that the creatures are out of handgun range, so he pulls his knife. If they are within knife range, they are in handgun range. Use the revolver and the knife.
  
  In the second story, Guns of Justice, much is made of the bounty on Corry Johnson being 30 silver dollars, thirty pieces of silver as was paid to Judas. A thirty dollar bounty wouldn't pay for the bounty hunters' supplies. A bit further along I came across this passage, "What her shotgun lacked in accuracy it more than made up for in brute force. “ Shotguns don't lack accuracy, they lack range and an easily portable supply of ammunition. At another point in the story, McCann fans the trigger of her Colt revover. If you don't know what is wrong with that, ask someone. We find this passage when McCann is slipping up on three outlaws, "The three men were lounging around a camp fire a few yards off. Two were still snoring loudly, the other, Clay Billings, was awake, but too busy with his flayed leg to notice the sheriff had temporarily rejoined the living." The author used a different definition of lounging to compose that sentence. And about that "flayed" leg, McCann cut it open, she didn't skin it. In that same campfire scene, one of the outlaws has a serious chainfire accident with his revolver, "Clay turned, leveling the Griswold at McCann’s head. He yanked on the trigger, igniting the grains of powder that had jarred loose when he dropped the pistol the previous night. The Griswold chain fired, one slug shooting out the barrel and the rest exploding in the gun, chewing Clay’s hand down to a mushy stump. He tried to scream, the sound never made it past the fragment of hot casing lodged in his windpipe and he had to settle for bubbling up frothy blood instead. " The Griswold was a Confederate cap and ball revolver, which is how a few grains of powder could escape the chambers and ignite a chain fire incident. There would be no fragment of hot casing to lodge in the outlaw's windpipe as the ammunition was not in cases.
  
  The author of the third story, Obsidian, has a problem with rode and ridden just as do many other modern authors. "People asleep, people filling their bellies with whiskey and warm beer, people who didn’t know he had rode into their town." Ridden not rode.
  
  The fourth story, The Atheist, has so many problems with facts and spelling that it would take too much space to enumerate them. I did highlight several in the text. I may be remembering the wrong story, but I believe that one of the careless errors is eucalyptus trees growing wild in Arizona in the 1800's.
  
  The last story, the Ballad of Jeremy Diggett, is science fiction but is the best western of the lot.
  
  Look carefully at the cover. The man is being attacked at close range by a large creature. Instead of focusing on his attacker, he is looking into the distance. What is he looking at that takes precedence over the creature?
• 
  Charles van Buren

  What is the guy on the cover looking at?, December 6, 2016
  
  This review is from: Five Broken Winchesters (Kindle Edition)
  
  I don't read fiction looking for errors but several in these stories just jumped out at me beginning with the first story, Red December, 1878, in which the main character, Harmon, laments not having brought his Henry rifle as it is tougher than the Winchester. Silly. The Henry is a Winchester. The Model 1866 Winchester which followed the Henry is an improved, more reliable Henry. The Model 1873 Winchester is a much improved new design available in more and better calibers than the Henry. Did the author get his firearms info from one of the bad movies or television programs of the 1950's? Of maybe he has confused the modern Henry Repeating Arms Company with the civil war era Henry.
  In the same story, Harmon takes refuge in a cave without making sure that he has not stumbled into a predators den. Yep, he has entered the snow beast's larder. At an earlier point in the fight with the beasts, Harmon finds that the creatures are out of handgun range, so he pulls his knife. If they are within knife range, they are in handgun range. Use the revolver and the knife.
  
  In the second story, Guns of Justice, much is made of the bounty on Corry Johnson being 30 silver dollars, thirty pieces of silver as was paid to Judas. A thirty dollar bounty wouldn't pay for the bounty hunters' supplies. A bit further along I came across this passage, "What her shotgun lacked in accuracy it more than made up for in brute force. “ Shotguns don't lack accuracy, they lack range and an easily portable supply of ammunition. At another point in the story, McCann fans the trigger of her Colt revover. If you don't know what is wrong with that, ask someone. We find this passage when McCann is slipping up on three outlaws, "The three men were lounging around a camp fire a few yards off. Two were still snoring loudly, the other, Clay Billings, was awake, but too busy with his flayed leg to notice the sheriff had temporarily rejoined the living." The author used a different definition of lounging to compose that sentence. And about that "flayed" leg, McCann cut it open, she didn't skin it. In that same campfire scene, one of the outlaws has a serious chainfire accident with his revolver, "Clay turned, leveling the Griswold at McCann’s head. He yanked on the trigger, igniting the grains of powder that had jarred loose when he dropped the pistol the previous night. The Griswold chain fired, one slug shooting out the barrel and the rest exploding in the gun, chewing Clay’s hand down to a mushy stump. He tried to scream, the sound never made it past the fragment of hot casing lodged in his windpipe and he had to settle for bubbling up frothy blood instead. " The Griswold was a Confederate cap and ball revolver, which is how a few grains of powder could escape the chambers and ignite a chain fire incident. There would be no fragment of hot casing to lodge in the outlaw's windpipe as the ammunition was not in cases.
  
  The author of the third story, Obsidian, has a problem with rode and ridden just as do many other modern authors. "People asleep, people filling their bellies with whiskey and warm beer, people who didn’t know he had rode into their town." Ridden not rode.
  
  The fourth story, The Atheist, has so many problems with facts and spelling that it would take too much space to enumerate them. I did highlight several in the text. I may be remembering the wrong story, but I believe that one of the careless errors is eucalyptus trees growing wild in Arizona in the 1800's.
  
  The last story, the Ballad of Jeremy Diggett, is science fiction but is the best western of the lot.
  
  Look carefully at the cover. The man is being attacked at close range by a large creature. Instead of focusing on his attacker, he is looking into the distance. What is he looking at that takes precedence over the creature?
• 
  Matthew

  This was a bit of a mix even within the sub-genre of Weird Western; for instance, Westerns on Mars are just not what I want in a Weird Western.
  
  Highlights:
  
  Panowich's Harmon Brown story "Red December 1878" and Leek's Justice McCann story "Guns of Justice" were both very good, though I'm unsure how the latter was "weird".
  
  Sayles' "Obsidian" was not bad.
  
  Kirkman's "The Atheist" was too full of itself for my tastes and after two sections given up on.
  
  And, even though VERY short, a Hawthorne tale is always a treat and thus I enjoyed Lowrance's "The Dead Hagedorns"
• 
  Seth Tucker

  The stories in this collection are a fun read in the classic Weird Western style. Some of these are more western than weird, but that doesn't detract from them at all. A collection of works dealing with strange snow beasts, philosophical cowboys, farmers on Mars, and gunslingers throughout. A quick fun read from cover to cover, if you are a Weird Western or Western fan, then this would be a good book for you.
• 
  D.

  I enjoyed some but not others. One i even skipped thru.