Wake of Vultures
The Shadow series, Book 1
Lila Bowen
Orbit
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Western
**** (Good)
DESCRIPTION: Life in the flyspeck of a frontier town called Gloomy Bluebird is every bit as dismal as its name suggests, but it's even worse for teenaged Nettie Lonesome. Since before she can remember, she's been little more than a slave to slovenly adopted parents Pap and Mam, a dark-skinned halfbreed with Indian and Black blood who wasn't even worth the teaching of lettering or sums. But she has a knack for gentling horses, and with it she hopes to escape the bleak future that stretches before her. That future almost ends before it begins, when a stranger turns up on the ranch one night - a stranger who turns to dust when she, in self-defense, strikes him through the heart with a splintered wooden stake.
Since that kill, Nettie starts seeing things nobody else notices (even as the stranger's fancy boots and hat and wad of cash help her slip away from Pap and Mam to a better position at the neighboring ranch as the boy "Red"). The ladies at the Leaping Lizard saloon have red eyes and long fangs, for one thing. Then there's something gnawing on the cattle - and the unfortunate incident when another ranch hand turns into a scaly, ravenous something. And she has the ghost of an Indian woman haunting her, insisting that she carry out revenge against a monster that snatched away the children of her tribe, a cannibalistic owl beast out of legend.
Nettie holds no truck with ghosts or monsters or destiny. All she wants is freedom: from Pap and Mam, from the terrible expectations of being a woman, from everything. But whether she likes it or not, it seems this is a fight she can't avoid.
REVIEW: Part Western, part urban fantasy, part alternate history, part quest and coming of age under harrowing circumstances, Wake of Vultures stars a heroine as stubborn, grit-blooded, and rough-edged as the alternate American desert country she inhabits (Durango Territory, of the Federal Republic of America). Raised by a bitter and abusive couple who were more interested in a slave than a child, she holds no illusions about life being beautiful or fair, knowing that any future that doesn't involve being Pap's punching bag is only going to be won by her own sweat and blood and stone-hard will. Indeed, she's deeply distrustful of friendship and kindness in any form, fully convinced that nobody could think anything remotely charitable about someone like her. She never set out to be a hero or vampire slayer - she didn't even know what a vampire was - and at first tries to deny what she's becoming. It takes a dead woman's ghost and a coyote shapeshifter (and some hard encounters with other monsters, including one that costs her dearly and effectively ends her chances at finding another future on her own terms) to force her to accept the quest before her, hunting down the owl beast that's preying on area towns and native tribes, human and inhuman alike. To do this, she has to join up with the ill-rumored Durango Rangers, who have a poor reputation by the lay public who has no idea they hunt monsters... though their reputation, as she finds out, may not be entirely be mitigated by their duty. Even as she's struggling to come to terms with possibly being the "Shadow" of native legend, she's struggling with growing up, complicated by feeling not at all like a woman, yet not quite like a man; nonbinary sexuality was not exactly a subject that came up much in her upbringing, where everything was black or white, man or woman, good or evil. Nettie also, despite her ingrained cynicism, still secretly hopes to find out who she actually is and why she was abandoned as little more than a baby. Her skin makes her mixed race heritage clear, but does nothing to tell her who her parents were and whether they might have loved her... whether anyone could ever love her, despite the self-loathing Pap and Mam carved into her soul. Nettie's strong personality is the main driving force through the plot, which is heavy on action and often quite brutal but not above pausing for some introspection and personal growth (or setbacks), though every so often her refusal to accept what's right in front of her could grow irritating, particularly at points where she backslides on lessons learned the hard way. The story also ends at an almost literal cliffhanger after the main climax resolves (a climax whose buildup involves a couple plot convenient developments that almost, but not quite, derailed the story for me). Overall, enough pluses balanced out those minuses to end up with a four-star Good rating. I might end up following the rest of Nettie's adventures someday.
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