J's Pages

by Barry Sadler

I've written about the Casca series before. In fact, I've even gotten e-mail messages from a Casca fan who's read my reviews. (It was very scary to discover that people actually read these things.) Anyway, The series is about this Roman soldier, Casca Rufio Longinus, who was one of the soldiers at Christ's crucifixion and was cursed by Jesus to wander the earth as a soldier until He returns. The theology is a bit lame, but I was really intrigued by the idea back in the 80s and bought a number of the books in the series. Of those, I remember Panzer Soldier as being the best. Well, I've just reread this one and now wonder "what was I thinking?" This time I found the book disappointing. It seemed unrealistic. Why I didn't catch it before, I don't know. Maybe it was because I'm more sensitive to the bad theology I mentioned above. Maybe I'm just more mature and can't swallow the Russians as the two dimensional bad guys they are protrayed as in the book. Maybe the old married man can't believe the male-female relationships the way the ignorant young punk once did. Maybe, with the drums of war sounding on the news every day, I can no longer relax and enjoy a tale of men slaughtering each other. God only knows. Anyway, the book is not totally worthless. As always, the character Casca has a streak of nobility in him. It's also a bit inventive to have the hero serve with the World War II German army. In this genre you would have expected him to have served with the Brits or the Yanks. (Of course he did soundly denounce Hitler and the SS.) Finally, in this book Sadler downplayed Casca's immortality, focusing more on the realistic action. So, for those few good points, I'll keep this one dry and rate it as waiting room material. 

LibraryThing link

Labels: BarrySadler, Casca, WaitingRoomMaterial

by Barry Sadler

The Casca series is about this Roman soldier, Casca Rufio Longinus, who was the soldier who stabbed Jesus with the spear when He was being crucified. Jesus then cursed Casca to "remain as he was" until He returned. (Mr. Sadler obviously got a bad translation of the Bible, because it reads there that Jesus had died before being stabbed.) So, ol' Casca becomes an immortal soldier ("eternal mercenary", it says on the cover) traveling about the globe and invariably getting into some war or police action. I was intrigued with the concept back in the 80s and bought about eight titles of the series before I got bored. In #15, it's 1718 and Casca has traveled  to the Caribbean. He gets caught up with some pirates and has some pirate adventures. Refreshingly enough, he makes only a mediocre pirate, unlike other adventure characters who quickly master everything they do. But otherwise it's pretty much standard hack and slay, with time out for an occasional wenching. I suppose this is good waiting room material, if you like that sort of thing.

LibraryThing link

Labels: BarrySadler, Casca, WaitingRoomMaterial