J T Edson Western Books Catfights

[CoffeeMug]

Rise from your grave!

Discovered this morning that a new JT Edson book is coming out next week on Amazon Kindle! And it's Book 5 of his Bunduki series! Sadly, Amazon is calling it "unfinished" (131 pages). Here's the description and the link.

https://www.amazon.com/Amazons-Zillikian-Unfinished-Bunduki-Adventure-ebook/dp/B0CKTPN9YT/ref=sr_1_1?crid=452IET8S6WAX&keywords=jt+edson+bunduki&qid=1698098219&sprefix=jt+edson+bunduki%2Caps%2C74&sr=8-1

At last! The final, unfinished action-adventure novel by bestselling author J. T. Edson can be enjoyed by his legions of fans worldwide!
On feeling the dismasted Amazon yacht overturning and themselves being thrown into the hurricane-lashed sea, it seemed to Beryl Snowhill, Charlotte 'Cha' Topper and Jill Jervis that nothing could save them from a watery grave.
Yet they had survived!
The mysterious aliens known as the Suppliers plucked them from what should have been certain death and transported them to the planet Zillikian. Having been delivered there, equipped and conditioned mentally to be able to use primitive weapons, they were left to their own devices.
It was fortunate for the Earth women that, in addition to the knowledge they had been given, they had already learned how to protect themselves. Being accepted by the Amazon nations, they became involved in the internal strife as dissidents sought to overthrow Queen Hippolyta. Before the affair was over, they needed all their strength, courage and ability with weapons and at barehanded fighting.
However, when peace was restored, they had won the right to consider themselves as being Amazons of Zillikian.

[maine516]

Thanks, CoffeeMug, for discovering this new release of The Amazons of Zillikian.  I always hoped it would eventually be published even though it wasn't completed due to JTE's passing.  I vaguely remember something about his family members having retained the unfinished manuscript and seeking to publish it at some future point, but I was certainly unsure if that would ever happen.  Now, my problem is that I don't do Kindle and won't likely be buying one just for this book.  I hope there will be a paperback version put out maybe by one of his former publishers.  If you hear of anything, kindly post it here.  I'll keep checking Amazon in the meantime.

[maine516]

CoffeeMug, it turns out I may have reason to purchase a Kindle reader.  If and when I do, possibly in the next couple of months, I'll look to buy this Kindle version of The Amazons of Zillikian.  If I do that, I'll post a review here unless you or someone else beats me to it.  As you well know, JTE left us hanging at the conclusion of Fearless Master of The Jungle with the strong implication that Bunduki's beautiful partner Dawn would have an epic battle with the evil Priestess Charole in the next adventure.  They came close to having one in Fearless Master, but they didn't.  My hope was that Dawn and Charole would eventually have this epic face off in the final book, The Amazons of Zillikian.  Although Charole's name is not mentioned in the overview for the new A of Z book, I'm hoping that somewhere in the 131 pages they will have this epic confrontation.  By the way, this topic made me go back and read the version of a Dawn vs Charole fight you created in lieu of us not getting it from JTE.  That was a fine fight description you wrote back in 2015 and it made me want even more to see a Dawn vs Charole long fight in The A of Z.  Of course, it's likely that Dawn would fight Queen Hippolyta in the finale of A of Z, but since the book was unfinished that fight might not actually have been written.

[CoffeeMug]

Ha ha, thank you for the kind words, Maine!

As for the new release, I've pre-ordered it, and these things don't exactly take a long time to read, so I can come back and post something after I've read it.

Also, don't know how experienced you are with Amazon, but you don't need to buy any new device to read on Kindle. You can read the digital copy on your web browser on your laptop/tablet or on their free app on your phone. You do need to use the browser version of Amazon to buy any digital books, though. They got in a fight with the phone companies and disabled buying books through the Amazon phone app.

Happy to post more specifics if need be.

[maine516]

Thanks for the Amazon info CoffeMug.  I am somewhat aware that there are other options for a digital reading of this book, but I do little to nothing with apps on my phone for one and since I now have another reason for buying a Kindle reader, I'm going that route.  I'll look forward to reading what you post here about the A of Z.  I'm guessing two things in advance; one is that Dawn will fight Charole in this final chapter and that an anticipated showdown between Dawn and Queen Hippolyta will not take place due to the book being unfinished.  We'll see if I guessed correctly.  Either way, I'm thinking there will be one or two female warrior women fights in this last book that could be excellent and very well deatiled.

[CoffeeMug]

My guess is that we get 'introductory' fights between one or two of the women from the description and lieutenant-level Amazons and build-up but no resolution on a fight between Hippolyta and whoever the leader of this group of British women is. I would LOVE to see Dawn and Charole go out at it, but I'd be very suprised if either is in it.

[maine516]

Yeah, I think you're probably right about either Dawn Charole being in this final book.   Dawn is not one of the three leading ladies mentioned in the cover writeup and would most likely be listed there if she was in the book.  It's wishful thinking on my part.  It comes from their near miss battle in Fearless Master of The Jungle and the teaser at the very end that they would meet up again in the future.  I look forward to your posting on what really happens.

[colt 45]

Might look for J.T."s Ladies, I think there are 2.

[CoffeeMug]

Might look for J.T."s Ladies, I think there are 2.

Kindle now has all 3: Ladies, More Ladies, and Ride Again.

[CoffeeMug]

Read it this morning.

The bad:
--It's quite short. You could read the whole in half an hour, probably.

--The first 2/3s of it is introduction, buildup, etc. written in the typical Edson style: he uses 30 words when 5 would have been enough and everything is handled backwards, so that the end of the action is given first and then he explains how it started. The usual bad writing stuff.

--You don't see Dawn, Charole, Queen Hera, or the actual Amazon civilization. Everything takes place on a beach and then in some random countryside.

--I don't think any of these characters among his best. I guess this is purely subjective, but my honest reaction is that none of them 'do it' for me the way my favorite Edson ladies do.

--The editors found no outlines or anything for the rest of the plot, so the book is just the 9 chapters he wrote, his description of the cover image, and a few back-cover blurbs he wrote.

The good:

--The last 1/3 has two fights, basically right in a row. The first one, the fight itself isn't spectacular, but the buildup to it is the best he ever did, imo. And then the second, the buildup is just okay but the fight itself is quite good.

--This book had a ton of potential for fights (this is related to my next comment).

--It really seems like his fetish is in full control at this point. There is a specific fight-related thing he does that's just hilarious, in a "we're just being very open about our real interest here" way. I would really prefer that readers discover it for themselves, but I can post in behind a spoiler if people want.

--Man, the possibilities here are so rich, I halfway want to write up the rest of it. It's pretty obvious where he wanted the story to go.

[maine516]

Thanks, Coffemug, for reading the book so quickly and for providing a concise and informative summary.   It may be a while before I get around to reading the Kindle version.  I would be more inclined to reading it sooner if Dawn and Charole were in the story, and they had their epic confrontation.  I guess we'll never know why he alluded to this in the previous book but didn't follow through with it in this final chapter of the series.  Hard to say, especially since the book was unfinished.

One of the things I liked about the Bunduki series was that even when there wasn't a female fight, there were plenty of beautiful female warrior women around and a lot of potential for some great fights.  Your comment about him being in full control of his fetish at this point is interesting.  He hid his fetish in his early westerns by saying he was just developing strong female characters.  By the time he got to his modern day (1970's) Rockabye County series, his fetish was far more open.  It seemed most of the stories in that series somehow always worked in female apartment wrestling and he even referenced catfight magazines and companies from that era at least in a general sense.  There was a definite pattern of him becoming much more direct and open about his fondness for catfights.

[biancabarclay]

In the Western series, it felt like Calamity Jane and Belle Boyd were building to an epic showdown, which never happened. 

Belle Boyd, the Confederate/New Orleans spy, had dispensed with her main rival, a sexy Union spy, in an epic arranged/forced topless fight after they were both captured in Mexico.

Calamity's only draw/loss was to Madame Bulldog, who turned out later to be her own mother.

The books brought Boyd and Jane together, but Edson could never bring himself to get them to fight.

Here's a link to a nice image of how that fight would look:

https://www.deviantart.com/pierrotlunaireart/art/Calamity-Jane-vs-Belle-Starr-410995814

[biancabarclay]

Here's a link to a nice image of how that fight would look:

https://www.deviantart.com/pierrotlunaireart/art/Calamity-Jane-vs-Belle-Starr-410995814
[/quote]

Here's the image: