Guns are a staple of modern American entertainment, which is a little ironic since many of the people who run most of the companies that produce our entertainment seem to hate guns. From books and movies to television and video games, there are a lot of guns and a lot of people who seem to use the soapbox created by these forms of entertainment to tell us we suck because we like guns.
Yet, because of this animosity toward guns, it’s pretty common to see some pretty dumb stuff show up in them. I remember an episode of Lucifer where you hear a hammer being cocked back, only to show the gun was a Glock. Another “popular” one is switching the safety off of the same brand of firearm. Yeah, there are a few with thumb safeties, but they’re not that common.
So, when you find a book written by a gun guy, you should step up and pay attention.
Larry Correia is just that kind of writer. I first started following his work with his Monster Hunter International series, which I absolutely love, and it led me to several other series of his. I was going to say not all have involved firearms, but that’s not entirely true. They always seem to show up, even when the world is based on feudal India, though it always works.
Anyway, on Tuesday, his latest book, “American Paladin,” came out. I picked up the Kindle version and got to reading.
The short version of this review can probably be summed up by the fact that I refused to sleep until I’d finished the book.
The story features Mike Spears, a loner who drifts from town to town fighting the forces of evil, a mission he took on after his entire family was slaughtered by something out of a nightmare. A young Spears declares war on the supernatural monsters who ruined his life, but along the way, he recognizes evil comes in many forms, and all are worth destroying.
While this is a modern fantasy story that features other supernatural worlds, magic, and monsters, it also touches on things like using guns to protect innocent lives as well as how the modern criminal justice system often lets both victims and society down. After all, if evil people were dealt with appropriately, Spears would have been able to continue his crusade against monsters from another world instead of our own.
In Spears, Correia has created a character that feels almost like the offspring of Jack Reacher and Owen Pitt from Correia’s MHI series. The loner who has spent his life becoming dangerous and applies it to destroying nightmares resonates with a lot of people. Westerns were popular for a reason, and Reacher has done well on Amazon for that same reason. Spears speaks to many of us because he, too, is cut from the same cloth.
And we need that in this day and age.
Reading through it, I couldn’t help but think about Iryna Zarutska and how she was stabbed on a Charlotte bus by someone who should have already been locked up. I thought of Henry Nowak in the UK, who was stabbed, then handcuffed as he bled out, simply because the responding officer ridiculously assumed he was guilty of making racist comments without even investigating whether the young man had been stabbed as he claimed. I thought of scores of people who have been hurt by people who shouldn’t have been on the streets.
So when Mike Spears takes a look at some homegrown bad guy, it struck a chord.
The fact that Correia can write makes it easier, obviously, and as a gun guy, he actually gets the guns right. Yet he’s not afraid to invoke the “Rule of Cool” when necessary.
Honestly, it’s a good book with the gun guy as the good guy, with an honest reflection of how the criminal justice system doesn’t get it right all the time, and how there really are monsters among us. Sure, the fantasy elements are the predominant antagonists of the story, but that doesn’t mean we should pretend that’s the only place evil could actually live.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
Help us continue to report on and expose the Democrats’ gun control policies and schemes. Join Bearing Arms VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Read the full article here
