SEED OF EVIL
as by David Thompson
Leisure, September 2010
The King family has always appreciated the remoteness of their valley deep in the Rocky Mountains. There, they have all the freedom they could desire. But the long trip to Bent’s Fort for supplies is one of the few downsides. All that changes when a newcomer opens the first general store in their region. The mountain men and scattered settlers are delighted—until people start to disappear, and dark whispers hint that a seed of evil has taken root in the wilderness.
Right from the opening chapter David Thompson hooked this reader with the question of just what kind of evil does the main bad guy dish out. Of course this question isn’t answered until much further into the story and by that time other plot threads had pulled me deeper into the tale.
Seed of Evil sees the return of one of my favourite characters from the series: Chases Rabbits, his struggle to understand the white tongue adding many laugh-out-loud moments. And for those who’ve followed this series for a long, long time, Chases Rabbits isn’t the only return, this other proving to be even more of a welcome surprise, although I’m not going to reveal who that is here, you’ll have to read the book yourself to discover just who it is.
One of the trademarks of this series is the author’s inclusion of very strong female characters and this book is no exception. Here we have a group of Crow women that soon become the characters the whole story revolves around. Raven On The Ground being particularly memorable.
I’ve already mentioned that there are moments of humour within the story but this wouldn’t be a Wilderness tale without many encounters with the more savage side of life, be they threats from human foes or wildlife, and this book offers plenty of those too. In fact Geist’s sudden, and unexpected, killing of one of the Crow women sure shows how brutal this series can be at times and in my mind is one of the strengths of the Wilderness books.
Once again David Thompson (David Robbins) provides the reader with another excellent entry into this fast moving, action packed, series.
Note: As has been discussed on many blogs and message boards Dorchester/Leisure has stopped producing mass market paperbacks, switching to ebooks with September’s publications. I read Seed of Evil on my computer using the free Kindle reader download provided by Amazon, which proved to be very easy to use.
