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The Valley of Creation

by Edmond Hamilton

Reviewed by Ruby


Eric Nelson is a gun for hire. He and a group of mercenaries are in the chaotic south-east Asia ten years after the end of the Korean War. The man that has been paying them just got himself killed in the last battle and they have to move fast if they don’t want to end up as dead as he is. Enter Shan Kar. He has a proposition for the mercenaries. There is a civil war in his hidden valley and his side is greatly outnumbered. He has offered to pay them in platinum if they help The Humanites win. They agree but Nelson has a bad feeling that Shan Kar is leaving out a few things. And he turns out to be right. They have entered a world that is a step back in time but with aliens at the same time that nothing is what it seems.

I enjoyed this book even though it was written in the 1960’s, as I've found that a lot of older books really don’t hold up nowadays. To be honest there wasn’t much to the book to begin with. It’s not even 200 pages long and there isn’t time to delve into a lot of character development. As a result most of the secondary characters are flat and practically interchangeable. The plot is interesting but simplistic and really obvious. It also lacks subtly and any depth. The good thing about it being short though is that there was no filler in the book.

Grade: C