The Children's Crusade

Traveler #11

by D.B. Drumm

Traveler, a mercenary in postnuclear America, trains a group of runaway teenagers in guerilla warfare in order to restore order to Bay City

Genres: Post Apocalyptic, Science Fiction

172 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Pen-name for Ed Naha
Pen-name for John Shirley

Reviews

[Wayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish all book series, action or whatever, were as good on book 11 as this one was. Never really encountered a dud with these yet. All been action packed and easy page turners that make you want more.

This time around, Traveler wants to take in the sites of California after roaming the deserts of New Mexico and the like for a long time. While camping in an old run-down shopping mall, he comes across a group of teenagers that are forming a plan against one of the groups Grandfather who also happens to be the mayor of the town. Seems like the kids got things wrong and it's not Granddad who is causing all the trouble, it's the police chief and some mean mercenaries. So, Traveler does the honorable thing and cleans up the kids' messes.

[Lewis Szymanski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ed Naha writing as D.B. Drumm.

Traveler stops yet another invasion of the new U.S. by Andrew Frayling. The publishing company must have been running out of ideas. He has help from a bunch of teenagers and a woman cop from Bay City California. Frayling gets away again, this time with a truckload of nuclear warheads. Orwell and President Jefferson show up briefly at the end of the book.

Pretty lame installment overall. It's light on violence, and heavy on Traveler moping about how shitty his life has been. At least he gets a new girlfriend, officer Amanda Purskey. Hopefully, she will show up in the next book. They were talking about going to China together in the last few pages.

[Charles · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my favorite entry but still entertaining. There's good narrative drive in these stories and they keep you reading. Traveler has had a bit of peace and that is now ended. He heads for the coast, to see the ocean and stumbles on a town starting to recover from the Nuke-Out, but someone is using it as a staging ground for a potential new Civil War.

[Paperbackbooks86 · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed this one enough to give it a Five Star review. Like the others have said, it’s light on action, and the story is more “light heartedly but overall I found the Traveler to be more like his old self from the first two books. He was more of a badass, one man army, than a guy who relies on help from everyone.

My two main gripes with this book are once again Drumm’s obsession with his hatred for Ronald Reagan, and disguising him as Frayling. You can tell Drumm was writing Frayling with the ideas of what he thought was going to happen to the country in 1986 (obviously didn’t come true) but rather than make Frayling the bad guy, and move on, he once again goes on his two to three paragraph long tirade about Reaga-I mean Frayling before getting back to the story. Frayling is a great villain, and Drumm has turned him into a great B movie villain, but it gets lost with his obvious hatered to the then president.

The other gripe, and it’s actually my biggest gripe with this book and the last book, was Drumm’s very strange need to put in Travelers list for teenagers. Once again, Traveler finds himself attracted to a 16 year old girl, and it reads extremely weird, almost like Drumm had some weird fantasy he was writing about. 11 books in, and Drumm randomly throws in Traveler lusting for underage kids. Very weird. I was hoping after I read the last book, that this one wouldn’t go down that route, especially when I saw the title of the book. Unfortunately, Drumm went there again.

Overall, I really enjoyed this one, and I liked the return of the badass Traveler. Five stars but def not the best in the series.

[Lane · Rating 2 out of 5]

found this in a coffee shop, have not read books 1-10, he called his car meat wagon