Hunger on the Chisholm Trail by M. Ennenbach

The way the Dark Tower series joins together King’s other books could very well be the reason I’ve been a constant reader all these years. I’m a huge fan of shared universe material, be it in cinema or in books.

Disclaimer since I’m highlighting what’s next because it appeals to me. When I review, I tend to focus on my reading experience, realizing sometimes that might help people decide to pick up a book, and sometimes not so much. Tracey is another character who is easy to invest in and makes a good counterpart to Karl. She’s strong, she’s funny, and she more than holds her own. The third act of this story doesn’t work quite so well without Jia-Li. While Beck holds the reader’s attention, a light needs to shine on some of the women in this book as well. As he talks about his exploits and shows his scars, I couldn’t help thinking ‘put the wendigo aside’, I want to read that story. During the course of a truly riveting dinner party scene, Ennenbach establishes Beck as a character I want to read more about. Karl Beck, who shows up to the party late, is arguably the protagonist of the story and is best described as a monster hunter. Ennenbach does a nice job here tying it to the strained, and frankly abysmal, relations between whites and Native Americans in the late 1800’s. The genesis of how a wendigo becomes a wendigo is a fascinating study, to say the least. I’ve read some real good wendigo books, but I still believe it to be an underrepresented trope in horror. Rather than following the notion that humans are the monsters, Hunger shows us in chapter one that monsters are the monsters. It does, however, take us in a different direction. It set the bar very high, and while Hunger is an entertaining and fun read, it doesn’t quite hit the heights of book one. Young, kicked the series off with fireworks.

At the moment, I believe it’s planned to be ten or eleven. I’d like to tell you how many books are expected in this series, but it keeps gaining in popularity, and they keep expanding it. Hunger on the Chisholm Trail, by Mike Ennenbach, is entry number two in Death’s Head Press’ Splatter Western series.

Hunger on the Chisholm Trail by M. Ennenbach