Fiction Review: An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris

Posted on April 18, 2019 at 7:49 am by Gene Ambaum

An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris. Saga, 2018. 9781481494922. 306pp. http://amzn.to/2WGtaWS
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Cover blurbs from Lee Child, Seanan McGuire, and Anne Bishop? I picked this up out of curiosity, never having read a book by Harris, and then couldn’t put it down.
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Lizbeth Rose is a small, deadly young woman in Texoma, where she works as a gunnie on a crew guiding/guarding others. Her part of the fractured, alternative version of the US feels more like the old west than not, though there are some modern conveniences, including weapons and vehicles, plus: magic. Gunnie Rose is the kind of quiet western hero who always does what she says she’s going to, whether that means killing, risking her life to get people to safety, or guarding wizards into Mexico to locate a descendant of Grigori Rasputin. The latter journey takes up most of the book, and an open secret of Gunnie Rose’s seems destined to set her at odds with said wizards (though it seems likely they’ll be killed before that’s an issue).
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All in all a fun novel featuring just the right level of violence and a character I could root for, that came into my hands at just the right moment and saved me from a more boring book that I continue to work my way through. Seems destined to be a movie or TV show, especially in the era of Westworld, The Man in the High Castle, and the Road Warrior movies.