The most highly decorated Native American in the history of the United States Cavalry, Jolon Winterhawk is a combat veteran of countless bloody skirmishes during the American Civil War. He’s a man of honor, struggling with sworn allegiances to two different nations-the country he’s sworn to protect, and the tribe he’s promised to defend.
During a top-secret mission to escort a military gold train through Oregon’s rugged Cascade Mountains, Winterhawk emerges as the sole survivor of a large-scale ambush. Duty-bound to complete the assignment and honor the sacrifices of his fallen comrades, Winterhawk makes the fateful decision to personally deliver the precious cargo of gold.
While Winterhawk embarks on a treacherous wagon trip across miles of dangerous wilderness, an aerial unit from the Army Balloon Corps has been dispatched to locate the missing train. Soon, the aeronauts seize upon a diabolical opportunity-stealing the gold for themselves.
Outnumbered and outgunned, Winterhawk soon finds himself in the fiercest battle of his life. But he quickly discovers that man is not his greatest enemy. Because there’s something else lurking deep in those woods. A monster of myth, a horrifying creature of enormous size.
“What is life, Jolon? It is the flash of a firefly in the pitch-black night. It is the breath of a buffalo in wintertime. It is the small shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the twilight. Life is just moments, my son.”
Sometimes an entire life can come down to just a single moment. In the end, that’s the only truth any of us can every really know for sure. Moments strung together is what constitutes our memories, validates our very existence.
This book is one hell of a ride. Buzan, in his debut novel, hooks the reader with the prologue, then allows you just a little bit of time—a moment, if you will—near the beginning to understand the stakes, get a lay of the land, and then ratchets up the tension and the pace to a near breathless speed pretty much straight through to the end.
Is this an action novel? Definitely. A historical adventure? For sure. A horror novel? Very much at times. A creature feature? Again, sometimes.
So, what is this novel? I actually thought about this a lot through the reading of it, and the best I could come up with was The Great Train Robbery crossed with an indigenous John McClane straight out of Die Hard, but that’s not quite all of it. I think you have to add in both John Wick and the Star Trek episode where Captain Kirk squares off against the Gorn. Mix those up well, and you’re starting to get an idea of what this novel is.
Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel like this. And that alone makes it deserve many stars. Any time an author can surprise me, that’s a good thing. And Buzan did.
While I do believe that this novel very likely could have stood on its own without the inclusion of the Nu’numic, I think Buzan’s choice was wise to include them as well. It turned a very good action novel into something far more insane and enjoyable.
I don’t want to give too much away, but here’s what I’ll say…Buzan does a really good job of getting inside Jolon Winterhawk’s head, and Winterhawk is got to be one of my favourite characters in recent memory. But the author also does create an interesting cast of characters, running the gamut of Really! Bad! Villain! right through to at least one courageous, heroic character who still makes me smile when I think of him.
At the same time, one of those Really! Bad! Villains!…I’ll be damned if the author didn’t make me feel really bad for him toward the end of the novel.
And speaking of the end, I have to say, I kind of wondered, maybe around the halfway point, how this was ever going to be wrapped up satisfactorily. I shouldn’t have worried. It was wrapped up far more than satisfactorily, and in the last pages, as I finally got to catch my breath, once again, damned if some of that breath didn’t catch in my throat with one final emotional gut punch.
One last note, then I’m out of here. While the entire novel is completely praiseworthy, I do have to save the most compliments for how the Nu’numic were handled. Buzan showed great restraint with their screen time, but he also made then utterly terrifying beasts of unimaginable ferocity.
Seriously, this would make a freaking firecracker of a movie. Hollywood? Netflix? Amazon Prime? Someone? You listening?
So, if you haven’t guessed by now, yes, I absolutely and unreservedly recommend that you order the hell out of this novel and feed it to your eyeballs as quickly as possible.
