Occultober Day 4: The Valley of Despair by Chris L. Adams

Occultober Day 4: The Valley of Despair by Chris L. Adams

Midway through our first week, I’m turning our attention to the multi-talented painter-author-poet, Chris L. Adams. Chris is an expert on the pulp era adventure stories and brings that sense of horror and adventure into his paintings and his stories. He’s also carving out a reputation as quite the painter of authentic-looking maps and I’m proud to say that he’s painted two for me—one for my Legionnaire series and one for my Winterhaven books. You can find examples of all of this at his website at https://www.chrisladamsbizarretales.com/

 

In his short novel, The Valley of Despair, Chris creates a story that the great authors of the past—people like Burroughs and Howard—would have been proud to pen. It took only one short chapter to convince me I was in for a thrill ride. German WWI pilot Erik von Mendelsohn has crashed in the jungle and is trying to survive a group of apes that have taken the wrong kind of interest in him. Desperate to escape, he reaches the edge of the jungle near a high cliff face and the apes who are in hot pursuit…refuse to follow him past the tree line. It’s a simple idea very subtly conveyed in the story, but it set all the hairs on the back of my neck standing on end. These totally aggressive and fearsome animals won’t follow our hero as he attempts to climb the cliff face to get away from them. It’s difficult not to ask yourself—what are the apes afraid of? What the heck is Erik getting himself into? And the tension just keeps ratcheting higher from this point forward.

 

Erik is a well thought out character—he’s smart, a bit impulsive, and a little too curious for his own good. The supporting cast is equally interesting. I don’t want to give away the plot, but the people Erik finds and gets into trouble with are equally brave and capable—and the problem they have to confront is better thought out than most “lost world” adventure-style stories I’ve encountered. In short if you want a fast-paced well-developed adventure story with great characters, you should give Valley of Despair a try.

 

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01...