Magical Western: Wake of Vultures, Lila Bowen (Delilah Dawson)

Wake of Vultures
Lila Bowen
ISBN: 9780316264310
Read January 31, 2016
Nettie is half-black and half "injun" and she's been treated like a slave all her life, but that all changes when she stakes a lecherous vampire one night.

First off, Lila Bowen is actually Delilah Dawson, who I've had the pleasure of meeting a few times, and also have read her YA books HIT and Servants of the Storm.  With this pseudonym, she heads out into slightly (only slightly) grimmer territory with the magical western story of Nettie Lonesome, who discovers that the black and white "facts" she learned from her disreputable and abusive "adoptive parents" don't match reality all that well.

The night Nettie dispatches a fearsome predator in the back yard, her eyes are opened to the wild and demanding magical world.  She'll have to stretch and grow and learn a whole lot to make it through to the classic western showdown.

I sadly can't say a whole lot about this book without giving bits of it away, but I have to say that having Nettie so backwards and isolated and fundamentalist in her thinking gives Bowen a great way to "tell" about the weird west that she's created without it being an "as you know, Bob" situation.  Nettie truly doesn't know a damn thing, but she's been tasked with a terrifying mission, and if she doesn't figure out what's going down pretty quick, she's sunk.

The supporting characters are believable and most are carefully drawn to be at least somewhat three-dimensional, given limitations of space.  No one (with the positive exception of a mentor, and perhaps unsurprisingly the negative portrayal of the "adoptive parents" and big bad at the end) is presented in an unremittingly good or bad light - people have their positive and negative traits without those traits becoming shorthands for identifying white or black hats.  Nettie herself finds her prejudices and stereotypes challenged and countermanded constantly through the book, and other characters have their own assumptions shattered as well.  Sometimes they react positively, occasionally not.  Despite the grim nature of the quest narrative, the overall sense of the character base is supportive and caring, which I figure is probably the most magical aspect of the whole story, but I'm not going to complain too hard, because it really becomes necessary to balance out the grim and gruesome evil that Nettie is forced to confront.

Also, can I say how forever grateful and happy I am that this is the first book in a series, but the storyline is totally and completely resolved.  There IS a cliffhanger, but it's one that I don't actually mind.  You'll have to read it to get the joke.  :)