'The Russian Cage' Gunnie Rose #3 by Charlaine Harris

 

From the BLURB: 

No.1 New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Charlaine Harris is at her best in this alternate history of the United States where magic is an acknowledged but despised power in this third instalment of the Gunnie Rose series. 

Picking up right where A Longer Fall left off, this thrilling third instalment follows Lizbeth Rose as she takes on one of her most dangerous missions yet: rescuing her estranged partner, Prince Eli, from the Holy Russian Empire. Once in San Diego, Lizbeth is going to have to rely upon her sister Felicia, and her growing Grigori powers to navigate her way through this strange new world of royalty and deception in order to get Eli freed from jail where he's being held for murder. 

Russian Cage continues to ramp up the momentum with more of everything Harris' readers adore her for with romance, intrigue, and a deep dive into the mysterious Holy Russian Empire.

* 

'The Russian Cage' is the third book in Charlaine Harris' alternate-history urban fantasy series, in which the Holy Russian Empire rules over a portion of America after influenza wiped out a majority of US politicians and left a power-vacuum that was filled by the escaped royal family of the Romanovs.

'Russian Cage' picks up a little down the ways from second book 'A Longer Fall', after which our 'gunnie' (gun-for-hire, strictly protection not assassination) Lizbeth Rose parted ways with magical grigori Eli, who returned to the Holy Russian Empire and left Lizbeth in Texoma ('Texas') - even though they'd established a powerful romantic entanglement. Eli had family and business to settle back home, and that side of the country is tricky for Lizbeth to enter into - because she's a descendent of Rasputin, and her blood is of great value to the Tsar for healing purposes.

But it's no surprise that Book 3 kicks off with Lizbeth getting word that Eli is in trouble - imprisoned and accused of a crime nobody will reveal - and she promptly decides it's finally time to visit the mysterious Holy Russian Empire (which roughly makes up the entirety of California) to save Eli.

Now, my heart kinda sunk once I realised that a chunk of this book would be Lizbeth and Eli separated and following Lizbeth as she tries to break him out and save him. I get it, I get it - it's way more interesting if she has to navigate Eli's territory solo and raises stakes if his freedom is her motivator. But I've come to really appreciate the Lizbeth and Eli romance, and a big basic part of me just wanted to read them together again (I know, I know - stories need 'tension' and 'plot' and all that jazz!)

It is really interesting finally seeing the oft-spoke-about Holy Russian Empire through Lizbeth's eyes for the first time. The story is mostly situated in San Diego, and involves Lizbeth meeting Eli's family (his mother, sisters, brother and stepbrothers) and getting up close to the monarchy and high-society. She also gets to reconnect with her sister, Felicia, who is situated at the Grigori School where she's learning magic and also subterfuge, as becomes apparent to a fairly proud Lizbeth.

I did really enjoy this story, *even though* the Holy Russian Empire was kind of a let-down after being so built-up in the previous two books? I think it's mostly that the plot is very focused on political intrigue and savagery, so the scenery kinda passes us by? But also speaking of the intricate machinations of the plot - I also found some really Big Events just whizzed by me and it wasn't until characters were recounting what happened that I even realised where we'd moved to in the story? I think it's because lots of these finer-points happen off-page, and it's hard to keep up when there's so many major and minor characters that fill out the Russian Monarchy coming and going.

I am usually a big fan of Charlaine's ability to pace and build tension, but honestly and compared to the finely-detailed and edge-of-your-seat finesse to be found in her 'Harper Connelly', 'Lily Bard' and 'Aurora Teagarden' books (I will concede that sometimes 'Southern Vampire' plots were *a trip* ... especially during the damn faerie instalments) - I just don't have the same admiration for the crime and thriller details of the plot in 'The Russian Cage'. It's not working like a well-oiled machine, and I think it's mostly down to a particularly bloated cast and too many layers of off-scene political infighting. Which - to be fair - previously Charlaine has focused on small-town intrigue and very insular-type stories (even Sookie mostly dealt with low-level vampire bureaucracy of Louisiana, and tried hard to stay off the radar of the higher-ups). 'Gunnie Rose' is Charlaine trying to fold in alternate histories, reconfigured politics, and all playing out on a much bigger stage of how an unstable Holy Russian Empire fits into this new America - with Lizbeth as a possibly lynchpin amidst it all too. It's a LOT.

I will also flag that I kinda read 'The Russian Cage' assuming it was closing out what would be a trilogy. But as I got closer to the end I started thinking; "Hmmmm, feels like there's more to come," and then LO! - I check and there's a fourth book due now too, for 2022. Which makes me nervous. Because Charlaine Harris is notorious in many of her series for totally and tragically upending her protagonist's lives once they get a *little bit* settled. And 'Gunnie Rose' has been the darkest in tone of all Charlaine's series so far, so I'm not holding my breath for everything to continue to be smooth-ish sailing for all involved.

But, I am excited to see where else this story goes. There's a real trend now for alternate American-history Western Dystopia's (see also: 'Outlawed' by Anna North, and 'Upright Women Wanted' by Sarah Gailey) that I am *so intrigued by* and wonder if its a byproduct of the Trump era to imagine all the sliding-doors ways that America avoided catastrophe throughout history (certainly in Charlaine's series, the question of what would have happened if Russia had a foothold in America, and a deadly pandemic was mismanaged to the point of fracturing the United States is ... *pointed*. And she started this series in 2016, in 'Unfettered II: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy' Anthology!)

4/5

'A Longer Fall' Gunnie Rose #2 by Charlaine Harris

From the BLURB:

In this second thrilling installment of the GUNNIE ROSE series, Lizbeth Rose is hired onto a new crew for a seemingly easy protection job, transporting a crate into Dixie, just about the last part of the former United States of America she wants to visit. But what seemed like a straight-forward job turns into a massacre as the crate is stolen. Up against a wall in Dixie, where social norms have stepped back into the last century, Lizbeth has to go undercover with an old friend to retrieve the crate as what's inside can spark a rebellion, if she can get it back in time.

‘A Longer Fall’ is the second book in Charlaine Harris’ Western Paranormal ‘Gunnie Rose’ series – set in an alternate world-history timeline in which the Romanov family escape Russia and revolution with their lives, and would go on a land-grab of America after the influenza pandemic wiped out most of the powerful men in Washington and left a power-vacuum.

So … I read the first book ‘An Easy Death’ way back in 2018 and when I went to continue the series with ‘A Longer Fall’ I’d evidently forgotten a lot of the world-building because it hit me like a brick. That Harris – back in 2018 – was writing a skewed world-history in which the trajectories of revolution and pandemic skewed slightly and totally remade the world? Yah. Reading the second book in 2020, it slaps hard.

‘A Longer Fall’ picks up a while after ‘Death’ when our protagonist, Lizbeth (a gun-runner with companies-for-hire) is helping transport precious cargo on a train that suddenly explodes and is derailed, then raided by masked bandits. What follows is an ‘Indiana Jones’-esque storyline of trying to get a trunk to where it needs to be, and along the way grigori wizard Eli reappears when it so happens that the trunk Lizbeth and Co. were carrying, is of great significance to the Holy Russian Empire …

Someone recently asked me if they’d enjoy this series, given their only other Charlaine Harris read was the entire ‘Sookie Stackhouse/Southern Vampire’ series and the way that ended left an (understandably) sour taste. I warned that ‘Gunnie Rose’ is perhaps the straight-up darkest of all Harris’s works; and even though all her books get there eventually, ‘Gunnie’ starts out dark in tone and then it’s a matter of brief glimpses of light getting in. One of those glimpses is the Russian wizard Eli, and his strange relationship with Lizbeth that’s built around their chance-encounters and clear sexual chemistry… but also a shared secret that Lizbeth has grigori blood in her veins.

Even though ‘Gunnie’ is the darkest in tone of all Harris’s books (beating out the previous ‘Midnight, Texas’ that I would have said had much more sinister southern gothic tones) I am so enjoying this ride. And ‘A Longer Fall’ especially – reading in 2020… it has HBO’s ‘Watchmen’ vibes meets ‘Indiana Jones’ for its vigilante, racial upheaval and culture-war undertones. I’m really impressed that Harris pulling on this one thread of history has unravelled so much of present-day society which is exactly what the best of fantasy and sci-fi should always do; hold a mirror up to the present world and make commentary through various mechanisms of almost absurdity.

I really enjoyed ‘A Longer Fall’, and can’t wait for ‘The Russian Cage’ coming in February 2021, which promises to send Lizbeth to the Holy Russian Empire (finally!). I really can’t see this series wrapping up in 3 books though, when the weight of the real world seems to be increasingly impressing on its relevance. I’m hoping for a full-blown multi-book series that continues to build this universe.

5/5

'An Easy Death' Gunnie Rose #1 by Charlaine Harris

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 20^th 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