Bare-Bones Western

Gun Boss of Tumbleweed by L. Ron Hubbard
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Oh boy was that ever bad! I'm not even Scientology-bashing here, this was just not good.

Gun Boss of Tumbleweed is one of L. Ron Hubbard's MANY adventure stories. Looking at his extensive bibliography makes you think, wow, this guy was one prolific writer! However, if most of his output is of this quality and length, pffft, it ain't no thang.

What we have here is a formulaic western of first draft-quality, speckled with adverbs and the stank of short-cut writing. One of my favorite snort-laugh moments came when Hubbard delivered a line that went something like:

"Well," he said briefly...

Granted, I've written some bad stuff, especially when I'm racing through the first draft, just getting it down on paper. However, the idea is to go back and edit that shit. Sometimes I miss a line here or there, but usually the whole book isn't littered with the stuff.

The over-the-top characters speak equally over-the-top lines. Their names and most of what comes out of their mouths is ridiculous. Also, this was an audiobook (little over an hour's length) and some of the performances were terrible. Poorly acted bad dialogue did not help this book's cause.

To be fair and kind, I was tempted to give this two stars, because as predictable and hackneyed as it was, it still had some fun moments and an occasionally nice "old west" setting descriptive.

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