 Unlike Lord of Light, which I reviewed last episode, and unlike pretty much all of Zalazny's work, I like this book. It doesn't have any of Zalazny's overly ornate and incoherent stylistic problems. It's just a straight narrative about a badass guy named Hell Tanner, who is hired by the nation of California to drive some plague serum across the radioactive wasteland that used to be the continental United States to the nation of Boston. It's not revolutionary or groundbreaking or particularly important literature. It's just an entertaining story. It doesn't pretend to be anything else. You can support 30 Seconds sci-fi and my other projects by becoming a patron. There's a link in the description below. I've complained in previous reviews about a book needing to have some sort of sympathetic character. Well, Hell Tanner is not at all sympathetic. He's a murderer and rapist and he's known for gouging people's eyes out. He's so bad he's like a cartoon. And there's a lot of cigarette smoking in this book. I mean, there's a real focus on cigarette smoking. Everybody's constantly smoking cigarettes. I don't know why Zalazny chose to do that, but it's so prevalent. It's actually funny. This book was originally a novella that was expanded into a novel. And you can tell a number of points through the book where there are interludes that don't seem to belong. And I'm sure that's why. Like I said before, there are none of Zalazny's stylistic problems, except right near the end of the book there are two points that each last about two pages where the narrative stops and there are a few paragraphs of just incoherent something going on. That's usually my problem with Zalazny. I literally can't understand what he's writing. But I don't disrespect Zalazny. I mean, he published this book at the same time he published Lord of Light. So he was obviously choosing to do what he wanted to do as far as style goes. Now, of course, there's a well known movie that was made out of this book in 1977. You can see it in its entirety on YouTube. It has almost nothing to do with the book. It has George Pappard and Jan Michael Vincent in it. And also Jackie Earl Haley. It is not very good.