#the anthill torture bits were super enjoyable tho i wont lie

[pasta-pardner]

Reading Roundup: "A Dollar to Die For"

Written by Brian Fox, 1975. Read January 2025.

Hey y'all! My goal for the year is to read more often, so I think I'm posting book reviews in addition to the other fannish stuff on my blog. My review for this novel is under the cut!

Though "A Dollar to Die For" is technically book #5 in the series, I didn't think the reading order would matter. The stories are independent episodes. I wanted to start with one of the spin-off plots first and read the movie retellings later. I plan to save the "For a Few Dollars More" novelization for last as a reward to myself (because FaFDM is my favorite film in the trilogy 🤠).

Here are my thoughts:

Loved the prose style in this! Brian Fox has a way with words, and his colorful descriptions made this an enjoyable read. And, as I write this review, I'm currently in the middle of one of his other novels, which also has delicious wording.

Brian Fox is at his best when he's writing short, yet evocative visual descriptions. Certain lines of prose like "the serape unfolding like bat wings" and "face as quiet as a mask" and "eyes as dull as marbles deep in their sockets" were incredibly gripping. They will probably stick with me for quite some time. Certain scenes-- like the cantina scene in the first chapter, or any of the scenes in the Canyon of Death oasis-- had an almost musical quality to them. And yet despite how downright poetic the language can become, Fox doesn't veer into excessive purple prose.

The prose is fantastic and I'm absolutely going to read more of his work, even outside of the "Dollars" series. the plot, on the other hand, is something I have a less favorable view on. The story itself is generic at best, repetitive at worst. There are THREE separate instances where a massacre of sleeping people occurs. I found myself saying, "surely, he's not going to pull that again..." BUT HE DOES ! The novel is a cycle of descriptions, sleeping massacres, and survivors nursing each other back to health just in time for the next sleeping massacre.

Despite the lackluster plot, I liked the ending and LOVED the writing style. And the characters (both original and reoccurring from the films) had lively page-presence, despite being because they are terrible people. 🍝

Basically, this is an enjoyable action novel if read in small chunks over the course of a week (or weekend). But I would advise against reading it in one sitting, because taking in too much of it concurrently can feel monotonous.