Joel Jenkins

There’s not a lot of women who capture the heart of Lone Crow, but Sylvia Spelling, Professor of Archaeology at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, is one. So, when she asks for his help in mounting an expedition to find one of the fabled Lost Cities of Gold, he agrees.

For help, Crow contacts his old associates Porter Rockwell and Temple Houston to join him and Spelling in El Paso, Texas. Rockwell brings along a cowboy named Han and a former Tong axeman, Chen.

Rockwell and Houston aren’t the only historical personages here. There’s also the hard-bitten Town Marshall Stoudenmire who, as in our history, is involved in a feud with the Manning Brothers, local ranchers and rustlers.

No sooner does the party arrive in El Paso then a massive gun battle breaks out. Stoudenmire thinks the attackers are hired guns of the Mannings an after him. But Crow learns they had another target: Spelling.

It seems they hired by another Miskatonic archeology professor, Fording. Spelling isn’t the only one who found, in the restricted section of Miskatonic U’s library, a 1538 letter from Friar Marcos Niza (another historical figure) with the location of the city of Cibola and its reputed treasures. Fording is more a looter than scholar, but he’s brought a lot of wealth and attention to the university. He not only has eyes on Cibola’s gold but Spelling’s body.

On arrival, a very attractive woman, Sandra Livingston, tries to pick Han’s pocket with the help of her son Curtis. But Livingstone isn’t the poor, simple widow woman she claims to be, forced into thievery to avoid prostitution after being widowed. She runs a widespread empire of brothels and other businesses with the help of her ostensibly 11 year old son. She is well aware who Fording’s target was and Spelling’s plans, and she blackmails her way into accompanying the expedition and provides logistical support of wagons and several armed men in exchange for a share of the loot if any is found. Curtis goes along too.

The Livingstones, especially Curtis, are some of the most interesting characters in the book, and Curtis is definitely not what he seems to be.

At Cibola, the party will have to deal with a tribe of red-haired giants and their giant mountain lions, the Deavils – a race of very short and underground dwelling Indians Crow has encountered before, and Fording and his gunmen.

As usual, Jenkins’ does an excellent job with pacing and action even if some of the plot turns are foreseeable.

This was another Lone Crow story with some serious moral themes. Bad men redeeming themselves and the importance of mercy as shown by Lone Crow and Rockwell to some of their bested foes. Some accept that gift with gratitude and change their ways. Others don’t. It was particularly interesting to have the normally laconic Lone Crow discuss with Spelling his feelings for her and the possibility of a life together.… (más)

It all goes awry because of the tubercular Doc Holiday. He’s waiting in ambush with the Earp brothers, Warren and Morgan, for the gang of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Lone Crow is leading the gang through the jungles of Costa Rica, working undercover as an alleged local guide. The gang is flush with silver stolen from a Mexican mint, and one of its members, Kid Curry, has kidnapped the beautiful Asuncion Ramirez and slung her over his saddle.

Once the ambush is sprung too early, a gun battle breaks out Lone Crow and his fellow bounty hunters manage, barely, to capture the surviving members of the gang, but then a volcano erupts and a fissure opens in the earth.

Out come marauding dinosaurs to cause further havoc. And, if that weren’t bad enough, some Mexican bandits show up after the gang’s silver. A temporary alliance is formed as the bank robbers and bounty hunters flee into the Hollow Earth. Don’t get too attached to the characters on the cover. A lot of them aren’t going to survive the first two chapters.

Jenkins’ Hollow Earth is a lot like Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Pellucidar. There’s a bright, glowing orb in the sky that serves as a sun. While there is no true night, daily mists present a similar problem.

And, of course, there’s dinosaurs aplenty and lots of battles with them, the pursuing Mexican bandits, and the various tribes of Hollow Earth. The latter include the Bathushites, a tribe of polyandrous warrior women; their enemies the Gurgan; and the always masked Vurundi, the only ones who can penetrate the poisonous swamps where a treasure in rubies can be found.

Friends will be made of enemies. Members of the tribes will scheme against their own.

Jenkins’ plot may be something out of Burroughs or H. Rider Haggard, but he freshens it up with his characters. The cantankerous Holliday usually tries to solve most problems with a blast from his shotgun. Sundance swears that he will not make a move against the bounty hunters until they reach the surface again, and the bounty hunters tend to cash in their reward on him though Jenkins kind of drops this idea towards the end of the book.

And then there’s Crow, the perfect hero: quite skilled in dealing out violence, brave, loyal, merciful, diplomatic, sober, and chaste.

Jenkins dialogue is often witty and doesn’t have any of the faux, “colorful” dialogue filled with strange sayings that some weird western writers seem to think evokes the West.

There is also a theme on the permutations of love and lust. Calah, a Bathushite warrior, admires Crow after he saved her life. A Gurgan warrior wants a treasure in rubies to buy a beautiful wife back home, and Sundance puts the moves on Asuncion and tries to convince her that her love has made him a changed man.

The reader can expect a fine story combining a lost world adventure with a weird western. What the reader can’t expect is a complete resolution since this novel ends on something of a cliffhanger for Crow. We’ll see how things work out for him in the, so far, remaining two books of the series.… (más)

From the days right after Civil War to 1925 and from New Orleans to England, Jenkins continues the saga of Lone Crow.

In eight stories and a couple of pieces of flash fiction, Jenkins adds to Crow’s legend. Wyatt Earp shows up again, this time joined by noted Old West attorney Temple Houston and gunslinger Luke Short.

Jenkins’ author’s note frankly admits he doesn’t feel obliged to follow the actual timeline of his historical characters. Morgan and Warren Earp meet different ends here than in history, and a story in The Coming of Crow implies Crow first met Wyatt years later than here.

Sherlock Holmes and Watson show up here, the former insisting on a rational reason for one of the supernatural menaces Crow is always encountering.

To the group of Crow’s former enemies and bounties turned allies is added Isidro Acevedo. It’s from him Crow gets his signature Colt Peacemaker though we still don’t get the details about that night when it was blessed by a Prophet and the dead rose from the earth.

And there are the women that catch Crow’s eyes and sympathies but only occasionally his physical attentions.
There are far fewer Lovecraftian monsters from deep time or extra dimensions here, but we do get a sinister lost Mesoamerican race among other things.

This is barely an anthology and only because of Josh Reynolds “The Third Death of Henry Antrim”. It features Reynolds’ occult detective Charles St. Cyprian, and Crow only makes an off-stage contribution. Old West buffs will, of course, know a bit of what to expect by the name Henry Antrim.

Jenkins’ retconning of history didn’t bother me that much because the stories are so good, and he stretches himself to novel length in the title story.

Crow has already continued the Lone Crow tales beyond what’s in these first two books, and I’m eager for the third.… (más)