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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.
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YA westerns and I don't like each other. This is a western, steampunk, American lore hybrid. I was expecting Cherie Priest-lite. Revenge and the Wild (awkward sounding title) started out awesome. We have an independent female main character with guts, a dirty mouth, and a mechanical arm that can crush a man's skull if he gets in her way. She cares about her family and her town. I'm loving Bena and the world building of Rogue City. And then, about 100 pages in, it lost me.
I don't know if it was Westie's increasingly immature behavior (twice she smashes something on her way out of the room when she doesn't get her way), her alcohol problem that serves no purpose to the plot at all, or the weird love quadrangle? Seriously, every guy (creature) in town BUT Nigel has a crush on Westie. O-kay. Yawn.
Finally, we get on with the real plot-revenge and then it just drags and drags until the climax in which our kick ass mc has to be plucked out of tough situations by two heroes. Because, we have been shown by then that Westie is not as kickass as we were told in the beginning.
Grrrrrr.
Still, a lot of this works. Again, great world building. Interesting story. Plotting needs work.
It's not a bad book, it's just not great. It could have been great. I think there will be fans out there for this book, I just hope they aren't half as critical as I am.
Also-a note about the cover: I don't normally make mention of a book's cover, but for crying out loud what in the hell is going on here? We have a girl-shaped thing in a corridor of birch trees for a quarter of the cover, but it's a photo(?) that's on fire (?) leading to a font that's kind of western calligraphy but not really?????? This needs to be changed to a girl in a gorgeous turn of the century dress with an incredible mechanical arm for the paperback. And drop the blood splatters from the chapter pages. If Westie was actually kicking anyone' s ass it would make sense, but that is not the case.
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