Amazon Cover
Two Gun Witch by Bishop O’Connell
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
She’s got two guns loaded with magic.
Will they be enough?
Talen is a Stalker, a bounty hunter hired by the Marshal Service to hunt down humans stained by dark magic. She’s also a two-gun witch, one of the few elven women who can wield two magical revolvers, spell irons, at once. For three years she’s lived for the next bounty, and a whisper of vengeance for the destruction of her people.
That changes when she takes the warrant on Margaret Jameson, a new kind of stained, one immune to the usual tools of collection. Upon finding her quarry, Talen realizes Margaret isn’t stained at all, but someone worked very hard to make her appear so.
The search for an answer carries the two unlikely partners from the wilds of the Great Plains to the expansive cities of post-Civil War America. There, they learn the truth is much darker than they imagined, and it could mean the death of millions, or even reshape the world itself.
MY REVIEW
Wow, this is a great piece of Weird West.
Amazing worldbuilding (my jam), great characters, incredible vistas (translating this into a visual medium like a movie would actually work), good mix of action and plot, nice magic and nice western.
Full disclosure: Received the book as part of an online Facebook Christmas book party, won the contest on best piece of Western History or something like that. No review required.
****
Final comment (May be considered a spoiler by some)
Goodread only comments since I see this as turning some people off buying the book, and the book really should be bought, especially by those people whom this comment will make them less likely to buy the book.
“Woke” Weird West – this narrative actually acknowledges the systemic racism and misogamy, as well as the War which America still has PTSD from, laying down deep roots to permanently imbedded their poison into our culture. It’s gonna take some mighty and constant tugging to uproot the issues. Generations. Like mint and mimosa.
[Two-Gun Witch is an awesome “weird west” with guns, witches, elves, and the western plains – but it also touched on systemic hatred, the history of bigotry and misogamy, slavery and Jim Crow laws being developed, genocide of indigenous people, dealing with PTSD and other fallout from Civil War, all for the sake of “manifest destiny”.]
Why are books like this important? Sometimes people won’t look in a mirror, but they will visit the funhouse at a carnival – a distorted mirror is still a reflection.
This sounds like something I’d enjoy. As for the “woke”, the trick is to not let people know this. I find that those who most need the message tend to miss the message entirely or misinterpret it. Sadly.