Part Five of my review of:
BOHUN: THE COMPLETE SAVAGE ADVENTURES
By Steve Dilks
Carnelian Press, 2024. 219 pages
Cover artwork Adam Benet Shaw
Interior artwork Kurt Brugel
Black
Sunset in the Valley of Death is the second story in this book first
published in Savage Realms Monthly (Issue 10, 2022), a digest-sized
magazine that has again and again proven itself to be one of the best sources
for fresh, new and original sword and sorcery in recent years. Black Sunset
in the Valley of Death is no exception. Opening with Bohun in the most
perilous position we have seen him in so far (tied to a sacrificial altar with
the officiating priest about to deliver the coup de grâce with a copper
dagger) this story rapidly moves on to Bohun’s desperate escape across the
wastes of a searingly hot desert, before reaching the welcoming shade of a jungle
where he stumbles across a delicate pre-human race in a secluded valley whose
ancestors once created the most advanced civilisation the world had seen, only
for it to be corrupted from within and destroyed. The aftermaths of this corruption,
though, have not died but linger on. And despite enjoying the time he spends with
these strange people, and the peace and quietude of where they live, Bohun finally
realises for the sake of them all he must go on and face this festering horror and
destroy it. In doing so he comes up against the most formidable supernatural
menace he has yet had to fight in a grotesque, dark and bloody climax.
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