Audiobook Review: “King of the Gunmen” By L. Ron Hubbard

Audiobook Review: “King of the Gunmen”

By L. Ron Hubbard

Multi-cast Performance

Produced by Galaxy Audio

Approx 2 hours

 

Have you listened to a good Western story lately?  I never thought I’d ever ask that question.  Westerns were never my genre choice for audiobook or even regular book consumption.  I’m a sci-fi/horror fan through and through.  I had started listening to the sci-fi stories from Galaxy Audio and was completely floored by the quality of the L. Ron Hubbard Audiobooks.

 

The production behind these books is several steps above amazing.  First they use top quality voice actors to portray the over-the top characters in the stories.  These actors are able to make these characters life-like and sometimes larger than life-like.  The vocal characteristics of the actors bring to life the emotions, character quirks and overall psyche of each character.  The narrator of these books also uses his talent to keep the flow of the story interesting (not that that there’s a lack of interest in the stories) and is able to make the narrator a character in the story.  The sound effects and music create the atmosphere which moves these stories without overpowering and even fit into the realm which they are placed.  The westerns all have music reflecting the days of taming the Old West and the Science-Fiction music is out of this world.  All of these elements add together to create the perfect listening conditions to fully absorb any listener.

 

What makes the stories even more fun is that these releases in audiobook form are only two hours long, the perfect length for some good old fashioned storytelling.  In the paperback form the books are printed on thicker stock of paper that give the reader the feel of the original pulps.  The covers are a lot sturdier so they’ll sit on your shelf nicely and last longer.

 

This release contains the following two stories:

 

“King of the Gunmen” was originally published in the July 1938 issue of “Western Yarns” magazine. Kit Gordon is a legendary gun-fighter who has just escaped a lynch-mob.  He was framed for the crime by Kettle-belly Plummer.  Barely hanging on for life Kit is in the desert when he helps save a lawman.  The lawman not knowing who Kit is asks for Kit’s help in the conflict between Cattlemen and sheepherders.  A Latin spouting law-man and an outlaw gunmen become the unlikely duo to bring down corruption and bring law to the untamed west.

 

“The No-Gun Gunhawk” originally published in the November 1936 issue of “Thrilling Western” magazine and as a fun story of mistaken identity in the old west.  Forced to change clothes with a masked rider, the son of a dead gunslinger takes up the gun he disavowed, to expose a plot.

 

If you haven’t been listening to these stories from the golden age, this would be the perfect starting point.  Lots of fun and action and the twists in the tale that L. Ron Hubbard did so well.