Weird Western – Page 4

Future Treasures: The Cold Eye, Book Two of The Devil’s West, by Laura Anne Gilman

Tuesday, December 20, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

I love weird westerns. But the sub-genre has fallen on hardsrcabble times recently, which means you have to be something of a risk-taker to write one. And to launch a series? You’d need to be a daredevil.

Laura Anne Gilman is a daredevil, and she proved it earlier this year with the first novel in her new weird western series, Silver on the Road. In his NPR review, Jason Sheehan said:

[Gilman has] chosen a fertile place to begin her new series (the broad plains, red rock and looming mountains of the American West), and amped up the oddity of it all by planting the Devil there as a card dealer, fancy-pants and owner of a saloon in a town called Flood.

And the Devil, he runs the Territory. Owns it in a way. Wards it against things meaner than he is, because Gilman’s Devil isn’t exactly the church-y version. He’s dapper in a fine suit and starched shirt. He’s power incarnate — a man (no horns, no forked tail, just a hint of brimstone now and then) who gets things done…

Lost in the middle of the story, you’ll feel somehow that you’ve always known the Devil wore a suit and ran a gambling house back in six-gun times, that he once sent a sixteen year old girl out into the world to fight monsters for him.

Silver on the Road became a Locus hardcover bestseller, and a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Pick for Fall 2015 in their SF, Fantasy, & Horror category. The second novel, The Cold Eye, arrives in hardcover next month from Saga Press. Here’s the description.

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Future Treasures: Nine of Stars by Laura Bickle

Sunday, December 4, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Laura Bickle is the author of the Dark Alchemy weird western series (Dark Alchemy, Mercury Retrograde), featuring geologist Petra Dee and her coyote sidekick Sig, which have been described as “Stephen King’s The Gunslinger meets Breaking Bad.”

Nine of Stars is the newest Petra Dee novel, and also the first Wildlands novel, which the publisher describes as “an exciting new series that shows how weird and wonderful the West can truly be.” I don’t see a lot of contemporary Weird Westerns, so consider me intrigued.

Winter has always been a deadly season in Temperance, but this time, there’s more to fear than just the cold…

As the daughter of an alchemist, Petra Dee has faced all manner of occult horrors – especially since her arrival in the small town of Temperance, Wyoming. But she can’t explain the creature now stalking the backcountry of Yellowstone, butchering wolves and leaving only their skins behind in the snow. Rumors surface of the return of Skinflint Jack, a nineteenth-century wraith that kills in fulfillment of an ancient bargain.

The new sheriff in town, Owen Rutherford, isn’t helping matters. He’s a dangerously haunted man on the trail of both an unsolved case and a fresh kill – a bizarre murder leading him right to Petra’s partner Gabriel. And while Gabe once had little to fear from the mortal world, he’s all too human now. This time, when violence hits close to home, there are no magical solutions.

It’s up to Petra and her coyote sidekick Sig to get ahead of both Owen and the unnatural being hunting them all – before the trail turns deathly cold.

Nine of Stars will be published by Harper Voyager on December 27, 2016. It is 384 pages, priced at $7.99 in paperback and $4.99 for the digital version.

See all of our recent coverage of Weird Westerns here.

Gunslingers, Shapeshifters, and Ancient Animal Gods: The Children of the Drought Trilogy by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson

Thursday, November 3, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

The border town of Sixes is quiet in the heat of the day, but at sunset wake the gunslingers and shapeshifters and ancient animal gods whose human faces never outlast the daylight. Appaloosa Elim had to enter Sixes to find his so-called partner Sil Halfwick, who disappeared inside in the hope of making a name for himself among Sixes’ notorious black-market traders.

That was the premise of One Night in Sixes, the popular debut novel by Arianne ‘Tex’ Thompson. A sequel arrived in 2015, and the concluding novel in the trilogy is now scheduled to arrive in paperback in late December. Here’s all the details; links will take you to our previous coverage.

One Night in Sixes (464 pages, $7.99/$6.99 digital, July 29, 2014) — excerpt
Medicine For the Dead (480 pages, $7.99/$3.99 digital, April 9, 2015) — prologue
Dreams of the Eaten (384 pages, $8.99/$6.99 digital, December 27, 2016)

All three were published by Solaris. The covers are by Tomasz Jedruszek.

See all of our recent coverage of series fantasy here.

The New Old West

Friday, March 25, 2016 Violette Malan Comments 3 comments

For years fantasy writers, and to some extent SF writers, have been looking for new worlds to write about, and wondering what the next big thing is going to be. I don’t mean just “are werewolves the new vampires” or what we can do to make zombies more interesting. Those are, if I can put it this way, single-trope problems.

More complicated is the general feeling that we’ve pretty much exhausted Celtic mythology as the magical/supernatural basis for our stories, and the pseudo-middle-ages as the setting of choice. Not to say that many wonderful stories aren’t still being told using those tropes – and being welcomed enthusiastically by mainstream audiences (even my Spanish cousins are reading/watching Juego de Tronos) but it’s getting more and more difficult to come up with something that feels fresh and innovative.

Of course we’ve already seen successful forays into non-white, non-western mythologies and cultures, but those of us who are white, and western, tend to tread carefully when we borrow from other cultures. No one wants to be guilty of any kind of appropriation.

On the other hand, we’ve also seen successful use of areas of western culture that don’t involve cousins of the Green Man. Dave Duncan’s Alchemist series successfully mines the European Renaissance, for example, while the success of Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, set in the Napoleonic era, just proves how hungry we are to see dragons in a new light. And let’s not forget the Victorian Steampunk phenomenon, which has fired the imaginations of Fantasy and SF writers alike.

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New Treasures: Revenge and the Wild by Michelle Modesto

Friday, February 12, 2016 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

You know what I haven’t featured in far too long? A promising weird western.

Let me make it up to you with the debut novel from Michelle Modesto, Revenge and the Wild, described as a “delightfully dark and fantastical Western.” You know you could use a quality weird western in your life.

The two-bit town of Rogue City is a lawless place, full of dark magic and saloon brawls, monsters and six-shooters. But it’s just perfect for seventeen-year-old Westie, the notorious adopted daughter of local inventor Nigel Butler.

Westie was only a child when she lost her arm and her family to cannibals on the wagon trail. Seven years later, Westie may seem fearsome with her foul-mouthed tough exterior and the powerful mechanical arm built for her by Nigel, but the memory of her past still haunts her. She’s determined to make the killers pay for their crimes — and there’s nothing to stop her except her own reckless ways.

But Westie’s search ceases when a wealthy family comes to town looking to invest in Nigel’s latest invention, a machine that can harvest magic from gold — which Rogue City desperately needs as the magic wards that surround the city start to fail. There’s only one problem: the investors look exactly like the family who murdered Westie’s kin. With the help of Nigel’s handsome but scarred young assistant, Alistair, Westie sets out to prove their guilt. But if she’s not careful, her desire for revenge could cost her the family she has now.

Revenge and the Wild was published by Balzer + Bray on February 2, 2016. It is 384 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $10.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: Your Brother’s Blood by David Towsey

Saturday, November 28, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Here’s an imaginative debut novel set centuries in the future, that sounds more like a weird western than science fiction. And you know how we feel about weird westerns! I’ve already pre-ordered a copy.

An unnamed event has wiped out most of humanity, scattering its remnants across vast and now barren lands reminiscent of the 19th century western frontier of America. Small clusters of humans still cling to existence in a post-apocalyptic world that is increasingly overrun by those who have risen from the dead — or, as the living call them, the Walkin’.

Thomas, a thirty-two year old conscripted soldier, homeward bound to the small frontier town of Barkley after fighting in a devastating civil war, is filled with hope at the thought of being reunited with his wife, Sarah, and daughter, Mary, both named after characters in the Good Book. As it turns out, he also happens to be among the Walkin’.

Devoid of a pulse or sense of pain, but with his memories and hopes intact, Thomas soon realizes that the living, who are increasingly drawn to the followers of the Good Book, are not kindly disposed to the likes of him. And when he learns what the good people of Barkley intend to do to him, and to his family, he realizes he may just have to kidnap his daughter to save her from a fate worse than becoming a member of the undead.

When the people of Barkley send out a posse in pursuit of father and daughter, the race for survival truly begins…

Your Brother’s Blood will be published by Jo Fletcher Books on December 1, 2015. It is 336 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $11.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: The Curse of Jacob Tracy by Holly Messinger

Saturday, November 14, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Molly Tanzer, author of Vermillion, in her blurb for Holly Messinger’s upcoming novel The Curse of Jacob Tracy, says “The weird western renaissance is upon us!” Pretty high praise for a debut fantasy novel. If, like me, you’re a fan of the Weird Western, I think it might be rewarding to pay attention to this one.

St. Louis in 1880 is full of ghosts — mangled soldiers, tortured slaves, the innocent victims of war — and Jacob Tracy can see them all. Ever since Antietam, when he lay delirious among the dead and dying, Trace has been haunted by the country’s restless spirits. The curse cost him his family, his calling to the church, and damn near his sanity. He stays out of ghost-populated cities as much as possible these days, guiding wagon trains West with his pragmatic and skeptical partner, Boz.

Then, just before the spring rush, Trace gets a letter from the wealthy and reclusive Sabine Fairweather. Sickly, sharp-tongued, and far too clever for her own good, Miss Fairweather needs a worthy man to retrieve a dead friend’s legacy from a nearby town — or so she says. When the errand proves far more sinister than advertised, Miss Fairweather admits to knowing about Trace’s curse, and suggests she might be able to help him — in exchange for a few more odd jobs.

Trace has no interest in being her pet psychic, but he’s been searching eighteen years for a way to curb his unruly curse, and Miss Fairweather’s knowledge of the spirit world is too tempting to ignore. As she steers him into one macabre situation after another, his powers flourish, and Trace begins to realize some good might be done with this curse of his. But Miss Fairweather is harboring some dark secrets of her own, and her meddling has brought Trace to the attention of something much older and more dangerous than any ghost.

The Curse of Jacob Tracy will be published by Thomas Dunne Books on December 1, 2015. It is 320 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Future Treasures: Six-Gun Snow White by Catherynne M. Valente

Saturday, November 7, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

With all the fuss around Catherynne M. Valente’s new novel Radiance, I almost missed the fact that Cat’s 2013 award-winning novella, Six-Gun Snow White, was being brought back into print by Saga Press.

Six-Gun Snow White is a delightful reimagination of one of the best-known fairy tales of all time, featuring Snow White as a gunslinger in the mythical Wild West. It was nominated for every major award our field has to offer — including the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards — and it won the Locus Award for Best Novella of the year, for the limited edition from Subterranean Press. Now Saga is reprinting the book as an attractive trade paperback, with cover and interior art by Charlie Bowater.

Forget the dark, enchanted forest. Picture instead a masterfully evoked Old West where you are more likely to find coyotes as the seven dwarves. Insert into this scene a plain-spoken, appealing narrator who relates the history of our heroine’s parents — a Nevada silver baron who forced the Crow people to give up one of their most beautiful daughters, Gun That Sings, in marriage to him. Although her mother’s life ended as hers began, so begins a remarkable tale: equal parts heartbreak and strength. This girl has been born into a world with no place for a half-native, half-white child. After being hidden for years, a very wicked stepmother finally gifts her with the name Snow White, referring to the pale skin she will never have. Filled with fascinating glimpses through the fabled looking glass and a close-up look at hard living in the gritty gun-slinging West, this is an utterly enchanting story… at once familiar and entirely new.

Six-Gun Snow White will be published by Saga Press on November 10. It is 154 pages, priced at $24.99 in hardcover and $14.99 in trade paperback. The cover and interior illustrations are by Charlie Bowater.

New Treasures: Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman

Saturday, October 24, 2015 John ONeill Comments 0 Comment

Laura Anne Gilman’s 2009 novel Flesh and Fire, the opening book in The Vineart War, was nominated for a Nebula Award. Her latest novel is an immensely appealing Weird Western featuring Isobel, who on her sixteenth birthday makes the choice to work for the devil in his territory west of the Mississippi. But this is not the devil you know. This is a being who deals fairly with immense — but not unlimited — power, and who offers opportunities to people who want to make a deal… and they always get what they deserve.

East of the Mississippi, in the civilized world, dime store novels and gossips claim that the territory to the west is home to monsters and magic, wild Indians and disreputable whites. They claim that in order to survive, any who live there must make a deal with the Devil.

Some of this is true.

Isobel is a child of the Territory. She grew up in a saloon, trained to serve drinks and fold laundry, to observe the players at the card tables and report back to her boss on what she saw. But when she comes of age, she is given a choice….

Isobel chooses power. Chooses risk. Chooses to throw her cards in with the Devil, Master of the Territory.

But the costs of that power are greater than she ever imagined; the things she must do, the person she must become… And she needs to learn her new role quickly: pressures from both outside the Territory and within are growing, and the Devil’s Hand has work to do…

Silver on the Road it the opening novel in a new series titled The Devil’s West. It was published by Saga Press on October 6. It is 382 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by John Jude Palencar. Read an excerpt at Laura Anne Gilman’s website.

New Treasures: The Incorruptibles and Foreign Devils by John Hornor Jacobs

Thursday, October 1, 2015 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

John Hornor Jacobs’ first novel was Southern Gods (2011), which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker Award. His new fantasy series began with The Incorruptibles (2014), and the second volume, Foreign Devils, was just published by Gollancz in the UK. Both novels feature the mercenaries Fisk and Shoe, in a fantasy western setting that mixes ancient Rome, savage elves, the wild west, daemons, and the Autumn Lords’ Empire, which hides a terrible truth at its heart.

Here’s Black Gate author Myke Cole on the first volume:

The Incorruptibles gives us the very thing we read fantasy for: something new. The Incorruptibles joins Red Country in what I hope will become a new sub-genre, the fantasy western. Westerns are American stories, and Jacobs’ Arkansas roots show in his gritty, hard-bitten tone. The Incorruptibles shakes like a rattlesnake, sings like a bullet, whispers like a tumbleweed dancing over hardscrabble.

And Pat Rothfuss on the same volume:

One part ancient Rome, two parts wild west, one part Faust. A pinch of Tolkien, of Lovecraft, of Dante. This is strange alchemy, a recipe I’ve never seen before. I wish more books were as fresh and brave as this.

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Black Gate

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