Welcome back, Readers! We’ve got a bonus book spotlight for you to help usher in the spooky season! Halloween is nearly upon us and as such, I was in the mood to read something a little spine-tingling, a little nerve clenching, a little cold-sweat inducing. Our regular spotlight this month featured a really cool but ultimately not at all scary book in Time Limit (Book two was completely funded via the Kickstarter, by the way! Let’s go!) and so I saddled up and hit the ol’ dusty trail to try and find something a little more in-theme for the month of October.
Book Stats
- Author: Alex Grecian.
Formats: Hardcover, Paperback, Kindle, Audible.
Price: $16.00 for Hardcover, $14.79 for Paperback, $12.99 for Kindle, of free via Kindle Unlimited, and $18.99 for Audible, or one Credit on Audible.
Length: 464 pages or 13 hours and 5 minutes in audio format.
Narrator: John Pirhalla.
Number of books in the series: Two at the time of writing.
Basic Premise
Sadie Grace is a witch from Burden County, Kansas and specifically the town of Riddle. She has many formidable powers and has, for the most part, tried to use them for good. And she is liked and respected by some folks in town. Unfortunately for her, not everyone takes to her way of doing things. A thousand dollar bounty has been placed on her head (It can be claimed whether she’s dead or alive.) and that has caught the attention of many folks from all over. One such man goes by the name Old Tom. He’s a self-proclaimed witch master and knows a lot about the occult. One way to kill a witch involves an effigy and a freshly dug grave.
The grave Old Tom uses happens to be that of Joe Mullins. Joe is recently deceased and survived by his wife, Rose. Rose happens upon Old Tom while he’s doing his eerie ritual and opts to learn more about him and the group he’s traveling with. Joining Tom on his journey are Ned and Moses, two cowboys who are wandering without purpose. Also, a young girl who Tom found, took in and has named Rabbit. Tom thinks Rabbit is a boy, but Rose immediately identifies Rabbit as a girl with short hair. Rabbit is mute and doesn’t speak, but seems to have an uncanny ability to sense danger and when it’s near, much like her namesake, she will run. Rose develops an affinity for the young girl pretty much right away and decides to travel with the group to look after her; Rose used to be a school teacher and while never really wanting to be a mother herself, she does love children.
Tom’s ritual, he assures everyone, is sure to have killed Sadie Grace. All they need to do is ride in to Riddle and collect that thousand dollar bounty. Now, keep in mind, a thousand dollars in the late 1800s (Post civil war, but we’re never given an exact year for the happenings in this book.) was worth between $33,000 and $40,000. That would be easily enough to buy a home, start a business, buy thousands of acres or just live in luxury for a long while. A massive sum is on the line, is what I’m saying. Even if the money was split several ways, it would amount to a lot. They load up on supplies from Rose’s place and hit the road, headed for Riddle.
On the way they come across a homestead inhabited by two men. There’s a big Wells Fargo coach on the property and after some shenanigans, our posse comes into posession of it. (I don’t want to give too many spoilers, here.) But it seems something very old and very evil has taken note of the group and it follows them closely. This demon has been around since the birth of humanity and it has nothing but evil on its mind.
Traveling across a wild frontier filled with witches, demons and ghouls, will our friends manage to claim the bounty? Or will their futures wind up as bleak and wind-washed as the prairie itself? You’ll have to read to find out.
My take
I really enjoyed Red Rabbit. It was less of a scare-fest than I thought it might be, but that’s not too much to the book’s detriment. The monsters and supernatural elements we do see are sort of melancholy and sad. There’s a section dealing with a train filled with orphans that was extremely maudlin, and there was a strange sadness to the cannibal ghouls we come across, too. Everything in this book seems born from tragedy. Even the most light-hearted characters we meet in this story come from a place of sadness or are headed there in short order. That, on its own, makes it a nice fit for the season.
Despite that sad undertone to everything, the adventure is pretty fun! And you have a lot of great, classic Western elements to enjoy. Gun battles, adventure loving drifters, self important ranchers and stolen stage coaches. The writing style is very concise and blunt so it maybe lacks a little of the romanticism of some other (Older.) Western novels. It’s not Riders of the Purple Sage, for example. It has a much more contemporary feel to it as a result.
There’s a large roster of characters and as this novel is written in third person omniscient, we get to see many points of view through their eyes.
Our narrator for the audio version is John Pirhalla and he does a really good job of keeping most of the characters sounding separate and distinct. No mean feat when most of the characters are old timey frontier folk! There are also musical sections where he sings and those are really nice additions to the story, paired with appropriately pretty guitar.
All in all, if you’re looking for something spooky but not too gory, you’ll enjoy Red Rabbit. Especially if you’re looking for more modern, Western inspired stories.
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