From
the BLURB:
From the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of the Sookie Stackhouse series and
the inspiration behind HBO's True Blood, comes an electrifying new thriller centered on a young
gunslinging mercenary, Lizbeth Rose.
Set in a fractured United States, in the southwestern country now
known as Texoma, this is a world where magic is acknowledged but mistrusted.
Battered by a run across the border to Mexico, gunslinger Lizbeth Rose takes a
job offer from a pair of Russian wizards.
She may be young, but Gunnie Rose has acquired a fearsome
reputation and the wizards are at a desperate crossroads, even if they won't
admit it. They're searching frantically to locate the only man whose blood they
believe can save their tsar's life.
As the trio journey through an altered America, they're set upon
by enemies. It's clear that a powerful force does not want them to succeed in
their mission. Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie who has never failed a client, but her
oath will test all of her skills and resolve to get them all out alive.
The Dark Tower meets True Blood in this gritty and wildly entertaining tale
of Gunnie Rose. A woman fighting unimaginable odds to keep her people alive
after the disintegration of America, this is a surefire hit for fans of The
Walking Dead or Westworld.
‘An Easy Death’ is the first book in a
historical-paranormal series by American author Charlaine Harris, called ‘Gunnie
Rose’.
If you’ve been reading my book blog for a
while now, then you would have figured out that Charlaine is easily one of my
all-time favourite authors – and certainly the one I own the most books of. I
inevitably fall in love with all her new series (whether they’re gritty
small-town mystery noir, or paranormal-noir) I always get hooked, and I’m
thrilled to say that ‘An Easy Death’ first book in this new series is no
exception.
For one thing, Charlaine Harris has her
finger on the pulse of American society. It’s little wonder that ‘Dead Until
Dark’ – the first book in her ‘Southern Vampire’ series – came out in 2001, the
time of September-11 and the most deadly terrorist attack on American soil.
What followed in that series (at first very successfully, and then towards the
end – less so) was a paranormal story focused on vampires that unlike Stephenie
Meyer’s ‘Twilight’ a few years later, was not solely focused on vampirism as a
metaphor for lust, but rather as an ongoing metaphor for “othering” in American
society. Which remained especially timely when HBO and Alan Ball adapted the
books into the mega-successful (again, more in the beginning than the end)
television series ‘True Blood’, that used vampirism as an allegory
for the gay rights movement in America. The final and seventh season of the
show aired in 2014, and the following year in America the U.S. Supreme Court
struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all fifty
states.
So, yes – you can see that Charlaine
Harris often has a canny ability to take a long view of the present situation
in America and write some fabulously quirky and timely allegory and metaphors.
Which is especially true here, in ‘An Easy Death’ and post-2016 Trumpism but
especially Russian interference in Western democracy. Because ‘An Easy Death’
and the ‘Gunnie Rose’ series is essentially a historical-paranormal Western
mash-up, set in a fractured America that broke apart after President Roosevelt
and half the nation died in the wake of an influenza epidemic.
As the protagonist, Lizbeth Rose’s,
teacher mother explains to her daughter one day;
A lot
of people didn’t want to talk about the past, because it was painful. But Mom
thought I should know how things had gotten to be the way they were: the dead
president, the dead vice president (influenza), the banks crashing, the
drought, and the influenza … again.
The
population had dropped, the government could not protect itself, and other
countries had grabbed pieces of America.“USA
got big bites takes out of it: by Canada from the north, by Mexico from the
south, and by the Holy Russian Empire from the west, where the Russian tsar
settled when he fled his own country. To the east, the thirteen original
colonies – all but Georgia – voted to form a bond with England, to keep from
becoming part of Canada. They picked the name Britannia. The southern states
banded together as Dixie. Georgia went with them.” She was pointing out the new
countries on the map.
“So
what about us?” I asked, looking at the old map. She pointed to the place where
we lived. “Texas and Oklahoma and New Mexico and a bit of Colorado became
Texoma, where we live. We live in Segundo Mexia, in Texoma. And this big area
north of us, the plains, that’s New America.”
Yes, especially interesting that in this
version of human history – the Romanov Dynasty was not ended in a basement
execution by Bolshevik rebels, but rather the tsar and his family (yes, all
four daughters and son) were rescued by his British cousin, and were royal
refugees for a time until they swooped in on a weakened America and created the
Holy Russian Empire (HRE).
When ‘An Easy Death’ begins – Lizbeth says
that following Nicholas’s death, the young Tsarevich of Russia Alexei Nikolaevich
has taken over as tsar (though rumours abound that he has a blood disease that
keeps him perilously close to losing control of his reign).
And while at first all of this big moving
around of human history like jigsaw pieces feels like Charlaine Harris just
world-building, it’s actually surprising how much all of the above soon comes
to directly affect Lizbeth Rose and the trajectory of this gun-slinging story –
when she’s offered a job to bodyguard two grigoris from the HRE as they hunt
down one of their own …
Now, as is often the case with the first
book in a Charlaine Harris series – there is a lot of laying the land here, and
possibly more than usual because there’s a historical component to this story
(that as far as I can tell, takes place some times in the 60s?) and has to go
over some rewriting of the 20th century to explain a few things;
And
bandits were everywhere, especially in Texoma, New America, and Dixie. I had
heard that in Britannia, the area that had knelt to England, there was so much
law that bandits were caught and hung quickly. The same for Canada, which had
expanded to take in a lot of northern America. Canada had its horseback police,
who were supposed to be crackerjack at their jobs. The Holy Russian Empire had
a squad of grigoris and militia whose job it was to track highway robbers and
kill them on the spot.
But
in Texoma and New America, formal justice was scarce on the ground.
I can imagine that people who come into
this hoping for all the Western gun-slinging and paranormal fun (of which there
is – since grigoris in this universe do possess magical abilities) may get
frustrated with how slow-going this is.
But I personally loved everything about
‘An Easy Death’ – right down to the very sparse romance that could well grow
into more with the series, or be a one-off (something else Charlaine Harris is
very fond of, is a sort of “red-herring” romance in the first book and a
completely new contender appearing down the track). Certainly ‘Gunnie Rose’
feels like classic Westerns, tipping into enclosed mysteries – in which every
book could be a completely new adventure with a whole new cast of characters. I
have learnt to be somewhat patient with Charlaine Harris, especially in the
romance department (hello, Harper Connelly and Tolliver!) so while there's not
a lot to go on here, I have hope and confidence that that will become more of a
focus down the track ...
Either way, I am onboard! And given the
comparisons to ‘The Walking Dead’ and ‘Westworld’ especially (I’d also throw
‘Wynona Earp’ in the mix) I’m also not surprised that this is yet another
Charlaine Harrris book being optioned
for television (her series ‘Midnight, Texas’
is also a seriously decent paranormal show!)
But mostly I am very impressed by
Charlaine building an entire series on the premise of how precarious American
history has been – that it all could have been so very different give or take a
few influential players dropping off the scene … and talk about Russian
interference in modern US-politics, here’s a new series in which the Russian
Empire has embedded itself in the American heartland. I can’t wait to sit back
and see how all of this unfolds, indeed.
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5/5
