Law of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

‘Law of the Mountain Man’ follows the trail of the four books in the series before it and tends to rehash most of those plots. Either Johnstone was trying to best the books before ‘Law of…’ or the publisher asked for more of the same. There are some definite differences and it’s still a good book, but the fundamentals are way too similar. For someone reading just this book, the novel is very, very good.

The writing is very good as a whole, but there are some obvious missteps that even a bad editor should have caught. Seems to me that Johnstone found himself in the midst of starting this series along with pumping out other books in different genres and ran into trouble.

A huge gold star goes to Johnstone in having a ton of characters in this book and being able to discern who is who. Something I had trouble with in the book I read before this by Louis L’Amour.

I’ll continue on from here and hope for better in that this series has continued from this 1989 book to now, 2013. I’m getting pessimistic, though.

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Revenge of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I figured if I kept reading books made by the Johnstone clan eventually I’d find one with kinks. This one had three that bothered me. One was having the main character disguised in a way that made little sense and did not fit the character already established in the three previous books. Also the overall plot was much like the last two. The story outside the rehash made it all worthwhile. The third is something I really like about the five Johnstone clan books I’ve read so far, but can’t mention here without giving away story secrets.

I otherwise recommend the novel. It’s exciting and fun to read as the other Johnstone clan books I’ve read so far. It moves the story of the Jensen family along and begs the reader to move on to the next in the series, which I will do as soon as I find the next one! 🙂

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Home Invasion by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wow! I liked this book a lot! I like how the characters are written, the plot, the pull of the story, the story, the writing, the plot twists, the ending, etc. I short the book a star due to a few items that bother me.

The book is about a small city in Texas taken over by a very large entity and more that will have to be discovered while reading. The great thing is that none of the takeover takes place right away. The story has number of threads and it takes a bit to tie it together. The reader knows it’s going to tie together and that is one of the things keeping you on the edge of your seat trying to figure how that will happen. This book starts on one level and ends up in a very different place. I love when i can’t figure an ending out and that was pretty impossible here. Another great things is that every character is expendable, which is typical of the Johnstone westerns I’ve read. Love how that worked out here. Made it all so much more realistic.

These days, in our current political atmosphere, the plot seems possibly not far off from possible. Staunch liberals will hate this book. People opened minded will greatly enjoy it. I sure like that conservatives are put in a good light here. I read so much contemporary mess where the conservatives, Republicans, patriotic people are evil. Though this book flips the favoring, it is still less strident than sooooo many authors I’ve read.

My concerns are mostly technical. I’m not a lawyer, but I believe there are some pretty big holes in how the court case early in the book is handled. Though I like the ending, I don’t quite believe everything would go so quick back to normal considering the premise of a fixated populace.

Besides a great story, I’m also amazed at the level this book is considering it’s coming out of the Johnstone mill. The amount of books pumped out a year by Johnstone and company would lead one to believe the books are just rot machine gunned out by ghost writers. This is the second book recently produced by the mill and am staggered at it’s quality. I really expected a loosey-goosey mess of a non-stop battle involving what I figured might be the “Invasion” before reading the book. As I read I discovered how very wrong I was. Have to almost wonder if some of the ghost writers are long-time professionals filling in some economic gaps by producing these.

I highly recommend this book.

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Return of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I picked up the first book off a bookshelf of a place I was visiting. Read it and now I’m amongst the very apparent many who are collecting the series of series. The first book drew me in as it fleshed out quite a set of characters and told a great story. I delved into number two hoping to find more of the same and did. It is a continuation of the first book and wraps the loose ends. Obviously a setup to get the reader on to number three. Though i doubt at the time William Johnstone in the mid-’80s knew of the industry he was about to spawn. Quite a set of books are coming out this year of 2013 years after his death.

I highly recommend this book, AFTER one reads the first.

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