Laser House on the Prairie

My friends at Excession Press have opened submissions for 2020 and I figured this was as good a time as any to talk in detail about their previous offerings, I should have done this a while ago, before Christmas at least, but I am powerfully lazy and have no other excuse.

Today we'll talk about Laser House on the Prairie by David W. Barbee. It is a western sci-fi fantasy heist novel. Our protagonist Jeph is retired and lives with his husband in the titular house when he is dragged back into adventure by a posse of old acquaintances from the bad old days. They are on a quest to steal the Red Orb, basically a powerful laser weapon thingy. Turns out the Orb is in storage in a city full of nerds, which leads to a number of problems.

Barbee seems to have an opinion about nerds and nerd culture that aligns fairly neatly with my own, nerdery and fandom ranges from fine, to annoying, to unbelievably toxic and harmful so it was refreshing to not see that culture idolized for once. In real life most nerds would probably be harmless or annoying at worst if it wasn't for the influence of capitalism pushing obsession as a way to monetize virtually any aspect of, well, anything, and it is so in Laser House on the Prairie as well, most of the nerds are just as much victims of their own society as they are victims to the deadly lasers of the protagonist's gang, and monetizing obsession leads to infinitely more casualties and chaos than if they were left to their own mostly innocent devices.

You don't have to dig down into the themes of the book to enjoy the read though if you don't want to, Barbee keeps the plot moving quickly and entertainingly, the climactic action scenes are satisfyingly described orgies of conflict(also lasers).

While I had fun, there are a couple of points that while not exactly problems, maybe could have been better handled. The primary one is the choice of protagonist, while "Sexy" Jeph is probably the nicest character in the posse, he is also an extremely passive protagonist, literally being forced at gunpoint and via mind control to participate in the plot. His only motivation is to get back home and he doesn't really want to be there, also his character arc, his growth from laser soldier to renegade adventurer to family man, all happens before the story begins, so he never really learns anything or grows particularly in ways that are noticeable. He is a serviceable audience avatar but I think I wanted to learn more about the rest of the gang.

My only other complaint, and this something I acknowledge is something that might not be a problem for most others, is that no one in the story is particularly a good person, every single character, including Jeph, are said to have committed terrible acts in their lives before the story, and some of them continue to do so during the book as well, which makes it a bit harder for me to root for them because in a just world they would all get whats coming to them. To be fair they mostly do.

I have a nitpick too, the House in the title is not, to my reading, actually a house made of lasers, from what I can tell it should properly be called Little House on the Laser Prairie, the prairie is in deed made of lasers, as is much of the wildlife, including sharks for some reason, which aren't prairie dwellers last I checked but I am not a scientist. Do not go into this book expecting lasers to behave as they do in real life, or for anything to resemble science in anything other than surface level detail if that, if you mentally replace every instance of the word "laser" with "magic" or some variation the story reads the same.

That all said I definitely recommend reading it, it's fund and a light read if you want it to be.


Laser House on the Prairie is available on Amazon if you want to give the richest commercial entity in history more money, or directly from the Excession Press site if you would prefer your money go directly to the author and publisher, the choice is yours but I am only putting one link up.