Prisoner Of The Horned Helmet (1988) - Plot & Excerpts
In 1973 Frank Frazetta painted The Death Dealer. It is a rather provocative piece of work as far as fantasy art goes, featuring a sinister figure atop a large black steed and wielding a bloody axe; face lost in shadow except for two smouldering red eyes gazing contemptuously out of the frame. It also has its own Wikipedia entry.He stripped each body and made a blanket from their leather tunics. He heaped their armor and weapons along with his broken axe and helmet on the blanket, tied them in a bundle. He drank from the stream in animal fashion, and washed most of the dry blood and gore off his body. Then he picked up the bundle, heaved it to his back, and started down a narrow trail beside the stream.In 1988, the first in a series of novels entitled “Frank Frazetta’s Death Dealer” was published: it was titled Prisoner of the Horned Helmet. The author (James Silke) draws his inspiration directly from Frazetta’s painting, and strives to infuse the story with the same menace and grittiness that Frazetta so successfully portrayed. It is also, unsurprisingly, a nod to the works of Robert E. Howard and his contemporaries. The prose is purple and the battles are bloody; the somewhat psychotic (anti) hero protagonist says nary a word and scantily clad maidens swoon at the first sign of danger.Politically correct this may not be, but it is powerful stuff. The first battle featuring Gath of Baal (a.k.a. the Death Dealer) is nothing short of breathtaking. He is somewhat invincible, which negates the stress factor to an extent, but hot-damn if I’d gotten hold of this in my teenage years I may well have pursued a career in pillaging or, barring that, writing.He was a massive horned demon of black metal and sinew graced by golden light, drinking air and holding the bridge with booted feet as if all the elements were personal possessions. The helmet had transformed him. He was death, and he had never felt so alive.Does the novel succeed in what it sets out to do, i.e. to bring to life the Death Dealer of Frazetta’s painting? To an extent, sure enough, but it does have some shortcomings: the plot is on the thin side and there is no character development to speak of. It’s a simplistic and occasionally silly story, but hey, who cares? They don’t make them like this anymore. If anything, you need to read this for the adrenaline fueled and uncompromising fighting sequences. Also: if you really wanted to, you could think of this book as “Beauty and the Beast” on some seriously hardcore enhancement drugs.Finally, a note on the cover art, also by Frank Frazetta. I always appreciate it if I am able to relate the cover of a book to its contents. In this instance we have Gath of Baal laying into some slave drivers at the ruins of a place called “Chela Kong”. Yes, it’s in the book.I’ll be rating this quite high, thank you very much. Nothing wrong with some pulpy goodness every now and then, although it’s not quite as good as, say, Karl Edward Wagner's Dark Crusade.
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