Book Review: Blood and Tacos #1

I'm actually having a hard time writing this review because I'm somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of awesome packed into this short compilation. The idea is simple; short stories written as excerpts from longer works of men's adventure fiction that never existed, but goddammit, should have been written.

A brief overview:

• The Silencer Strikes: The Silencer is one bad mother-shut your mouth! A Vietnam vet who has a penchant for silenced weapons and a hatred for organized crime. Also likes banging his dead best friend's sister, natch.
• Longhair Death Farm: One of the many adventures of the Albino Wino and his albino alleycat, Chalky. Take David Carradine in Kung Fu and replace him with a drunken, trouble-finding albino bum, and then throw in cannibalism, hippies, AK-47's, and oral sex. No, I'm not even joking.
• Battleground U.S.S.A.: Texasgrad: The Ruskies have invaded, the Mexicans have become their patsies, and gosh darn it, but home-town beauty Sunny Summerfield has been taken captive by some nefarious Red! Time to deliver a little justice, Texas-style! Oh, and don't forget to sharpen your tomahawks, spirit-brothers!
• Bonds of Blood: When Tiger Team Bravo takes on an assignment, they see it through to the end, no matter how many eighteen wheelers they have to board by jumping from a low-flying Cessna whilst in the middle of a highway tunnel. Okay, so there's only one, but still, there's also 'splosions. And gold bullets. And a guy named Colonel Professor.
• Blood and Tacos: Introducing Chingon, the World's Deadliest Mexican. Just picture Danny Trejo wielding a bullwhip and some hand grenades and you won't be too far off the mark. I'd already seen Machete like, four times in the theater and I had to fire it up at home again after reading this story.

There's also three book reviews: one of a Penetrator novel, one of a series called Raker that I'd never heard of, and another about a terrorist killing man-machine called Ben Slayton, T-Man.  All three are great reviews with lots of humorous insight into the world of post-modern pulp fiction, especially how these books were, all too often, incredibly racist, sexist, piles of trash that, let's face it, we devour like a fat man crashing a wedding banquet.

Men's Adventure fiction from the 60's through the 80's was already derivative, cheesy, often inappropriate fun. That a group of talented writers got together and produced something derivative, cheesy, and often inappropriate that's not only fun, but friggin' hilarious, is an achievement worthy of high praise. Each of the shorts in this compilation does yeoman's work of replicating the literary DNA of their respective Men's Adventure sub-genres, and I definitely want to see more from each of these respective "forgotten series".

So do yourself a favor and go buy Blood & Tacos #1 today. If you don't, Chingon is going to make you explode with a hand grenade. And the explosion will kill you.