Book Reviews: A Monster-Wild West Mashup Fails

 Melinda West, Monster Gunslinger, by KC Grifant (Bridgid’s Gate Press)

I’m a softie for mash-ups like Jane Austen with supernatural creatures or, in this case, the Wild West with monsters. Throw in a strong, competent woman protagonist and you get a fun read, one in which I’m willing to overlook a lot. I won’t insist on peerless prose or immaculately consistent worldbuilding in a “fast, fun read” novel.

Melinda West, Monster Gunslinger had a great deal going for it, starting with a landscape inhabited by a slew of weird, wildly creative monsters (giant flying scorpions, psychic bugs, things with made-up names). All the creatures seem bent on mayhem, leaving me to wonder whatever happened to the herbivorous varieties, but such details are not essential in “fun, fast read” Monsters-in-Wild West tales. At the outset, I found the easy banter between Melinda and her partner, Lance, appealing, as they offer their services to desperate settlers beset by the aforementioned monsters.

Therein lay the first of several elements that kicked me out of the story. I lost sympathy for Melinda (and Lance, but mostly Melinda) when a wave of scorpion-monsters emerges from a mine and begins to swarm. Melinda demands payment from the sheriff of the beleaguered town. As in, right now or they’ll let the creatures do their worst. We call bullying vulnerable folks “punching down,” and it’s not okay in a sympathetic character. As it turned out, the sheriff had the payment ready, but what if he hadn’t? Would Melinda and Lance let the town be destroyed? Were they in it only for the money? I found this exploitative moment so off-putting, I never re-connected with the characters.

Following this, there’s a lot of dialog about getting together enough money to retire (someplace without monsters), a reunion, and the beginning of a quest that is no more believable than anything else in this world. By this time, the inconsistencies in worldbuilding, emotional distance from the characters, and amateurish prose turned continued reading into a slog. The prose occasionally rose to the level of adequate but was all too often clunky, pretentious, and laced with emotional manipulation of the reader. As I said, I can put up with a lot for the sake of a “fun, fast” story. I rolled my eyes at, “They continued upwards, the horses losing steam while they stomped through the snow mounds,” but kept going (these are normal horses, not mechanical, btw, and I leave it to you to imagine a horse stomping through snow). Here’s the line that caused me to stop reading: “His face hung grimmer than she had ever seen.”

Of course, YMMV.

Short Book Reviews: Fighting Amorphous Monsters Without Using Magic

City of Broken Magic, by Mirah Bolender (Tor)

In this fairly recognizable post-Industrial Revolution world, magic is both friend and foe. Enchanted amulets are useful in all sorts of ways, but let one become empty or damaged, and an infestation of vicious magic, taking the form of a jellyfish-like “monster” will erupt, consuming everything in its path. In the city of Amicae, as elsewhere, Sweepers clear out such infestations, but they are few in number. Two, to be precise, the notorious, irascible, scoundrel-with-a-heart-of-gold, Clae Sinclair, and his apprentice, Laura. Soon they acquire a third, one of the very few humans to possess innate magic. But the situation in Amicae is unstable, with government propaganda proclaiming that there is no infestation problem and Sinclair’s team fighting an increasingly desperate battle with the odds stacked against them.

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, the system of magic and its evil manifestations is reasonably fresh, and I liked the characters a great deal, especially how their relationships evolved over time. On the other hand, I found much of the magical terminology vague and confusing. “Monster” could mean anything from a tyrannosaur to Cookie Monster to a serial killer to a thing-that-goes-bump-in-the-night. I never got a clear visual of these, and I really wish they had a better, more descriptive name. Amorphic, toxic ink-squid would do, amorphs or ATIS for short. Likewise, “Gin” and “kin” (don’t ask me why one is capitalized and not the other; I haven’t a clue) and a host of other terms for magical energy.

My biggest disappointment, though, was that I thought the story was setting up for a romance between Laura and Clae. She’s beset by other people in her life who want her to be less than her potential because of her sex, except for Clae, who consistently demands her best and refuses to coddle her. A dozen subtle moments make clear her growing tenderness for him, her compassion for his tortured past, and her maturity within their relationship. Perhaps the author saw that as an easy, predictable outcome, but I relish stories where characters force one another to grow, and then to grow in love.

The usual disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book, but no one bribed me to say anything in particular, either way, about it.