It aggravates me when writers just steal another writer's work and fail to provide credit. Yes, there is the rubric of homage they use which I accept when the audience knows the work or works used. I like Shanghai Knights in particular for the considerable allusions to Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, or the reference in Do the Right Thing to the Robert Mitchum film The Night of the Hunter. But when a writer just lifts the entire plot of another writer, in this case Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game, and doesn't provide a credit then it is just stealing. Here Paladin is tricked by Prince Boris Koslov Radachev, a Russian noble, into being in a hunt: a hunt where Paladin is the animal hunted. No surprises here, just a minor repackaging of a good story.
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