Last year ended with a flurry of great Web reviews for Bluster’s Last Stand.  What is most gratifying is that whatever flaws the reviewers found, they all liked my protagonist, H.H. Lomax.

The Lone Star Literary Life website started its review this way:  “Reading nineteenth-century Old West memoirs can be a fast way to fall asleep — unless they have been written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by San Angelo novelist Preston Lewis, a Spur Award winner and former president of the Western Writers of America.  Bluster’s Last Stand is the frequently hilarious fourth book in Lewis’s Memoirs of H. H. Lomax series.  In this new entry, Lomax survives the Battle of Adobe Walls, gets into a deadly feud with General George Armstrong Custer (whom he derides as ‘General Bluster’), and later lands an unusual job in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show.  Along the way, he also works as a bouncer and guard in a Waco bordello and prospects for gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota.”

LSLL concludes “Bluster’s Last Stand is clever, absorbing Old West entertainment, a book that delights as well as informs.”

The Clueless Gent blog posed several questions:  “Do you have to be an historical fiction aficionado to enjoy Bluster’s Last Stand?  NOPE.  Do you have to enjoy tall tales of the ‘Old West’ to find this story engaging?  NOPE.  Did I find this book particularly fun to read?  Hell yeah!!!!  Why?  CHARACTERS!!!!  …  H.H. Lomax had an uncanny way of being in the wrong place at the wrong time (or the right place at the right time, depending on your perspective).  … H.H. Lomax has quickly become one of my very favorite characters!”

The Reading by Moonlight blog by Ruthie Jones said “Bluster’s Last Stand is absolutely hilarious. Traipsing alongside H.H. Lomax, aka Leadeye Lomax, as he goes about his adventures is fun and exhilarating, to be sure.  But it’s Lomax himself who provides the most entertainment, with his quick wit, ingenuity, and uncanny ability to always land on his feet.  Lomax’s escapades in Bluster’s Last Stand take the reader on a wild ride from beginning to end.  The writing is quite snappy, and Lomax’s attitude as he muddles through his predicaments is both pragmatic and amusing.  Preston Lewis’s ability to develop a character is second to none.”

The Missusgonzo blog concluded “Even if you don’t care much for history, I think you will find this book entertaining. Lomax’s hilarity and heart of gold soften the blow of the harsh realities in this part of history, and make them interesting.  Or if you want to set the humor aside, there are some provoking thoughts on morality and perception that might stir you up.  I look forward to reading more about Lomax’s adventures.”

Very gratifying, these reviews.  A couple reviewers, however, dinged the book for a “very few” comma and spelling errors, but in my defense I am, after all, transcribing from Lomax’s pencil-written recollections on Big Chief tablets.