Amazon user ChickJ gave The Straw-Man Book One 5 stars and titled his review “The Straw-Man, hero, villain, trickster and what else.” Here’s everything else he had to say: Six imaginative short tales. Barry has really created a really new little universe in his shared universe. The opening start is three strangers tried to convince a young man to kill himself to save the universe. Then it gets strange. Each short story fleshes out this universe. Read one, and you have to read the next one. The straw man is a real winner. (The only thing that I found odd was at the end Barry Reese, the author, dated the book 11/16/2021. It should have been publish sooner. It came out in 09/11/23) A must read for all pulp readers.
Thanks, ChickJ! It sometimes takes awhile for books to move through the publishing pipeline — in the grand scheme of things, two years isn’t a terrible length of time. I definitely feel your pain, though. It’s hard to wait!
Meanwhile, Raven gave the book 3 stars. His review was titled “Could have left out the prolific f-bombs and it wouldn’t have harmed the story one bit.” Here’s his full review:
Sam Hein is murdered one night by a group of three people who have been having dreams that tell them they must induce him to commit suicide. Otherwise, the dreams say, it will cause the rise of an ancient creature that will cause the deaths of many people. This murder simply precipitates the binding of Sam Hein and the entity known as Gwydion fab Dôn into the avenger known as the Straw Man.
These are six tales featuring this new creation as it battles the minions of both heaven and hell, both realms seeming to want it destroyed. The creature is merciless to those it deems worthy of its vengeance but is capable of friendship or at least a truce with those it isn’t after. Sam Hein isn’t gone; he is a secondary manifestation of the being when the Straw Man isn’t in control.
The Straw Man is dressed in tattered clothing and a disreputable hat, with a carved pumpkin for a head. He carries a razor-sharp scythe as a weapon. The pumpkin face, even though carved, is capable of a range of expression, and the eyes glow with a greenish light. The creature moves swiftly and silently.
This new pulp character is interesting, to say the least. I like the fact that the Straw Man actually has a secret identity in Sam Hein (neat choice of name there!) And as Barry explains, the other side of the coin, Gwydion fab Dôn, is a legendary being of Welsh folklore, a trickster and magician. You get the feeling that Sam needs the trickster in order to live and the trickster needs Sam for a body in which to manifest. A scarecrow is thrown into the pot and stirred for the complex recipe.
I will say that I believe the graphic sexual content and prolific f-bombs take away from the story. I have followed Barry from way back when the Peregrine was the Rook, and his pulp is great, hard-hitting stuff, heavy into the occult side of things—good versus evil. But his descent into this hard use of language and insistence on graphic use of sex isn’t necessary to make his stories a great read. For me, anyway, it is a minus, not a plus. And a totally unwarranted one at that.
So, with a heavy heart, I give this one only three stars. I am sorry, Barry.
I appreciate the time you took to review the book, Raven! I’m glad that you appreciated the core character and the overall plot of the book. I am sorry that you felt that the language and graphic nature of the storytelling was a bit too much. I try to keep my “golden age” pulp stories at a PG-13 level but for the modern day stuff, I thought it made sense to push the envelope a bit more to differentiate things and to give me the opportunity to do something a bit different than what I do with Lazarus Gray and the like. It’s been a couple of years since I wrote this book but I honestly don’t recall it being super-heavy into the sexual side of things… perhaps my memory is fading or it could be that we just have different levels of what we consider over-the-top. If it makes you feel any better, I think that future volumes (and the subsequent Dark Society spin-off series) tone down the sex, if not the language.
Barry Reese - Writer of Badass heroes 