Books: Fury From the Tomb by SA Sidor (2018)

“Saqqara, Egypt, 1888, and in the booby-trapped tomb of an ancient sorcerer, Rom, a young Egyptologist, makes the discovery of a lifetime: five coffins and an eerie, oversized sarcophagus. But the expedition seems cursed, for after unearthing the mummies, all but Rom die horribly. He faithfully returns to America with his disturbing cargo, continuing by train to Los Angeles, home of his reclusive sponsor. When the train is hijacked by murderous banditos in the Arizona desert, who steal the mummies and flee over the border, Rom – with his benefactor’s rebellious daughter, an orphaned Chinese busboy, and a cold-blooded gunslinger – must ride into Mexico to bring the malevolent mummies back. If only mummies were their biggest problem.”

This Indiana Jones/The Mummy hybrid where author SA Sidor (who has published four thriller under the name of Steven Sidor) adds doses of pulp-ish noir sadly never really gets out of third gear.

Still, I generally found Fury From the Tomb to be an entertaining book, filled with mummies, a giant white worm, a gunslinger, and little tomb robbing on the side. The book is also frustrating in a few things. I’ve mentioned before of not having a fondness for first person narratives –it’s a literary device that only works once in a while, and only in limited genres. But beyond that, I actually found the narrator a bit annoying –he likes the sound of his own voice and appears to know too much about everything. Being this way, he goes off on endless rants that goes on for multiple pages and that would slow the intrigue and adventure down (sort of like if Indiana Jones stopped beating on Nazi’s to offer a discourse on boot designs of the Third Reich).

I also like the dynamics of the four main characters, who Sidor breathes life into. However, it did seem weird to me that these folks of 1888 seemed completely unfazed with all the supernatural stuff going on. And the book is way too long and that may be why it took me a while to actually finish it.

However, I’ve decided to read the second book, so maybe he ironed out some of the problems from the first book?