I know I just tossed out a 5 star review last month, but I had no other choice here. This book is a round house punch of awesome. It came out of nowhere and tackled me into the dirt. At first I worried that it might not be Speculative Fiction, because it has a strong western feel and is certainly in the camp of Historical Fiction however, due to its brutality, I think am in well within my rights to label it horror. In fact if there are authors reading this review that would like to learn more about writing ruthless villains, they should pick up this book for that reason alone.
As mentioned, this book takes place in America's past and moved from the end of the civil war to just past the Wild West era. The thread follows a group of men that find that during the chaos of these unsure times they have the power to make their own rules and let's just say those rules rarely help anyone other than themselves. These are not men whose path anyone would wish to cross. If you did meet them, chances are you would not survive long enough for it to occur a second time.
Jackman grabs the idea of anti-heroes and takes it up about twenty notches. The Winter family is the group of villains most fiction authors would be trying to get you to hate so you felt no mercy when the 'good guys' gunned them down. This is set against a backdrop of corruption, betrayals, and severe drinking. Hedonism meets a violent Id and the walls go crashing down.
The Winter Family, by Clifford Jackman | Horror | SFReader.com Book Review
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