Review: Interesting Plot, Solid Characters
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 11, 2010
This is a solid western with adventure and intrigue. The author does a nice job with the main characters, and the narrator (Mick) feels authentic as a young gunslinger from the Old West.I like that the novel started right off with some action. There's not a lot of boring backstory about the town or the characters (I've read Lonesome Dove and some of the big fat classic Westerns, and they can definitely get bogged down in the details). The character information is doled out gradually over the course of the story in a way that leaves you wanting to know more.I thought the dialogue and character interactions were the strongest part of the novel.The gun fights and action scenes were the weaker parts, IMO. Sort of a he-shot-then-I-shot-then-this-happened list of events rather than the building of a fast and tense scene that made me worry for the characters and feel like I was there.The narrative also fell into some of the pitfalls typical with first person, and the number of "I figured," "I looked," "I noticed" sentences stuck out to me. For example, we'd get something like, "I noticed all four guys had badges" when "All four guys had badges" would have said the same thing.Those are minor quibbles though and this was a solid offering, especially for an indie book. I wouldn't mind reading more stories with these characters.