Oh, do I hate spending hardcover money on a book I consider a "beach read"--something relatively short & fluffy, probably a romance or urban fantasy. It's not that I won't re-read these books eventually; it's just penny-pinching plus a bred belief that some books were just made to be mass market paperbacks. Still, I knew I was risking some new-release spending when I picked up An Easy Death and A Longer Fall, the first two books in Charlaine Harris' new-ish Gunnie Rose series.
I'm a big fan of Living Dead in Dallas & the Sookie Stackhouse books (sure, they fall off a bit toward the end) and I found the Midnight, Texas trilogy middling but enjoyable. I was in the mood for something relatively light that wouldn't require an epic commitment, and Harris seemed to fit the bit. I also thought there was a chance the stories in the first two books would be self-contained enough I wouldn't feel I absolutely had to buy the latest. (In fact, that build of telling a contained story, episode-style, while also building up higher stakes in the larger fictional world is a skill of Harris', notably deployed in the Southern Vampire series.) And I suppose I could have stopped after the first two installments: the particular job is fairly well wrapped up at the end of each novel, but the larger stakes and questions--the relationship between Liz & Eli and the question of succession in the Holy Russian Empire--remain hanging. And The Russian Cage, just from the title, has to address some of that, right? (Part of me wonders if this could turn out to be a trilogy; it seems to have the potential to sustain a longer series, but I imagine things are going to escalate quick after crossing the border into the HRE.)
The books are urban fantasies in Western clothes, or vice versa. In a world where the United States fragmented after FDR's assassination, various droughts, and influenza (and the Romanovs fled Russia to eventually take over California), Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie, a gun-for-hire guarding settler caravans and other travelers. The likable heroine is probably the series' best feature, though the shoot-outs (Lizbeth may have a moral compass, but it's remarkable how often it points to justified killing) and the worldbuilding are a lot of fun. The secondary characters are sometimes sketchy but usually interesting--you can appreciate Harris' mystery-writing bona fides & while the initial security job generally seems straightforward, there always ends up being an element of mystery. And suspense ... think I'll get back to it now ...
Basically a 21st Century dime novel, but awfully pretty.
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