{"id":20987,"date":"2025-12-17T10:00:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-17T15:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/?p=20987"},"modified":"2025-09-19T14:12:50","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T18:12:50","slug":"the-night-shepherd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/2025\/12\/17\/the-night-shepherd\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Night Shepherd’"},"content":{"rendered":"

At this year\u2019s PulpFest<\/a>, I picked up the fourth Zana O\u2019Savin<\/a><\/strong> novel by Craig McDonald<\/a><\/strong>, The Night Shepherd<\/em>, with another great cover by Douglas Klauba<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>This series provides several pastiches of pulp heroes, but uses an interesting concept. Here, certain authors caused their characters to become actual beings, called \u201ctulpas,\u201d though not intentionally. Thus we have \u201creal\u201d versions of Doc Savage<\/a><\/strong>, and his aides and cousin; The Shadow<\/a><\/strong> (though none of his associates); The Avenger<\/a><\/strong> and the members of Justice Inc.; and others, including the Domino Lady<\/a><\/strong>. And sadly, there are villainous tulpas as well. We will meet some additional tulpas in this one.<\/p>\n

In the prior story, Doc O\u2019Savin<\/strong>, The Shade<\/strong>, and Richard Benedictus<\/strong> have joined together into Justice, Amalgamated. They came together to confront a very dangerous tulpa out to destroy them. But one of Lincoln Lodestar<\/strong>\u2019s main followers, also a tulpa, is now targeting the team, with a special focus on Zana. He has the ability to influence people remotely, even to kill others and themselves. And worse, he has even more sinister plans for the world.<\/p>\n

Zana is in Paris for the upcoming Summer Olympics in 2024. But there also seems to be a strange cult of nihilists, called the Nada, who are causing bizarre attacks, killing themselves in the process. Some are aimed at Zana. But there is another player involved, known only as the Night Shepherd<\/strong>. Where does he fall in these events? Is he on the side of Zana and the rest, or is he involved with the Nada cult and their strange leader, Caspian Thrax<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

Another mix to all this is that in the previous novel, The Shade, in his identity of billionaire Kellar Thurston<\/strong>, is running for U.S. president and will be marrying Allegra Ariadne<\/strong>, a fellow tulpa from an unpublished author. Will that play a role in things?<\/p>\n

Can the team run down our supervillain tulpa before more people are killed, or worse, before he is able to destroy or brainwash any of our team? Or be able to release the various viruses and diseases he has been creating at the Olympics to create a global pandemic?<\/p>\n

We are promised a new novel coming soon, The Invisible Crusade<\/em>, probably in about a year. And Craig says he has an idea for a further novel. We\u2019ll have to see what comes.<\/p>\n

If you like this work, take a look at Craig’s other novels, including his Hector Lassiter<\/a><\/strong> series. Lassiter is actually a real character in the world of tulpas, and we get hints that he dealt with the same Nada cult in Paris in the 1920s, which I think is covered in One True Sentence<\/em>.<\/p>\n

This series has been interesting, providing a different way to do pulp-hero pastiches, which allows for the tulpas to exist alongside the fictional works they are based upon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this year\u2019s PulpFest, I picked up the fourth Zana O\u2019Savin novel by Craig McDonald, The Night Shepherd, with another great cover by Douglas Klauba. This series provides several pastiches of pulp heroes, but uses an interesting concept. Here, certain authors caused their characters to become actual beings, called \u201ctulpas,\u201d though not intentionally. Thus we […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":21292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The Pulp Super-Fan looks at 'The Night Shepherd,' the latest Zana O'Savin adventure by Craig McDonald.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[7,46,14],"tags":[1505,110,2027,226,109,1971],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-20987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-new-pulp","category-pastiche","category-review","tag-craig-mcdonald","tag-doc-savage","tag-douglas-klauba","tag-the-avenger","tag-the-shadow","tag-zana-osavin"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/files\/2025\/08\/zana-osavin-4-featured.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3eLo8-5sv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20987"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21322,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20987\/revisions\/21322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20987"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/pulpsuperfan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=20987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}