Terrible Book Club
Join Chris & Paris every other Tuesday to discover if you really can judge a book by its hideous cover, bad title, or weird synopsis.
Episode 45 - A Specter is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber
Fritz Leiber may have coined the term "sword and sorcery" and he may have written some legendary stories, but this book is not to be counted among those same accomplishments.
Content Warning! Drugs, generalized violence, racism, sex, slavery, & weapons (guns/knives).Line-to-line, the writing is actually pretty good and the dialogue is believable in the world of the book. There's even some great satire in this book (the whole vision of Greater Texas), but it doesn't really end up doing much besides producing a few laughs. Plus, the sexism is laid on a bit too thick to really convince us that it's part of the satire and the main character is an annoying, arrogant, and naive jerk who just wants to have earth sex at the expense of far more important things.
A Specter is Haunting Texas is far from the worst thing that we've read on TBC, but it does little besides holding up a caricature of America and pointing at it.
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