I don't know if I could call this a Western, because it takes place almost entirely on board a ship in the Pacific Ocean. But, it has all the elements of a great Western - strong characters, cheeky dialogues, lively action, and acts of terrible violence and laudable valour.
I hugely enjoyed this action-packed tale! ( )

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Title: Harrigan
Series: ----------
Author: Max Brand
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 225
Words: 65K

Synopsis:

Harrigan, a red irishman, is in Hawaii, looking for something to keep him moving. He joins in a fight and backs up a black irishman and finds out he's a captain of a vessel. They go their separate ways until Harrigan's wanderings bring him to the docks. He sees the captain's ship taking off and jumps aboard. The Captain takes him aboard as a common sailor but promises that he's going to break Harrigan.

A woman sees Harrigan being broken and tries to intervene, thus making things even worse. This brings her to the Captain's attention however and suddenly there is even more bad blood between Harrigan and him. A hurrican destroys the ship and the woman, the Captain and Harrigan all end up on a deserted island. The woman uses deception to keep a fragile peace and both men abide by it until they are rescued.

They are rescued by a crony of the Captain who is even more powerful and even worse than the Captain. The breaking of Harrigan begins all over again. The new Captain is a cruel hard man and his crew eventually mutinies. Harrigan gets dragged in to protect the woman and the old Captain gets involved to try to take her away from Harrigan. Things go badly for everyone, the ship is destroyed and our trio make their way to some homestead in South America. There they find out that The Great War has started and they all, unbeknownst to each other, join up.

My Thoughts:

Love triangle. And yet I never once considered putting this book down. If you want two testosterone laden Irishmen trying to beat the living daylights out of each other and break the other's spirit, all the time, this is the book for you!

And for anyone who doesn't know (cause I didn't for years and years) red irish and black irish refer to the hair color, not their skin.

This was a story about men being stupid and yet glorious all at the same time. I laughed, I groaned, I sympathized, I shook my head and rolled my eyes. Why I didn't abandon this? Because the action between them was so intense it was like the words jumped off the page and grabbed hold of me and didn't let me go. While their hands were around each other's throat, they were just as much around mine. But even with that, it still only gets 3 stars because of love triangles and stupidity.

Also, this isn't a western. It is a Men's Adventure Story.

★★★☆☆ ( )