An Easy Death - Charlaine Harris

    2018; 306 pages.  Book One (out of 6) in the “Gunnie Rose” series.  New Author? : No, but a new series.  Genres: Alternate Timeline, Dystopian Fiction, Magical Fantasy.  Overall Rating : 6*/10.

 

    Meet 19-year-old Lizbeth “Gunnie” Rose.  The “gunnie” nickname tells you her vocation—she’s a professional gunslinger-for-hire, working out of the city of Segundo Mexia in Texoma.  We’ll explain those weird place names in a bit.

 

     Gunnie lives in a “wild, wild west” world.  Traveling between settlements is a dangerous, almost suicidal undertaking.  There are oodles of bandits roaming the hinterlands, looking for victims, to say nothing of Indian hunting parties that may or may not decide to shoot travelers if game is scarce.  Finding work as a bodyguard is easy for the sharpshooter Gunnie.

 

    So let’s ride along with Lizbeth and her crew of fellow gunnies.  I sure hope it’s not too boring of an experience.

 

What’s To Like...

    An Easy Death is the first book in Charlaine Harris’s “Gunnie Rose” series.  It is set in an alternate timeline America where the United States has been shattered following an early assassination of President Franklin Roosevelt.  Various nations have seized large chunks of the fringe areas of the United States, and the remainder of the nation has pulled itself apart.  I don’t recall the time element being listed, but the setting has a1930s-40s feel.

 

    The story is told from the first-person POV, Lizbeth’s.  We tag along in her two most recent gunnie jobs, which both start in her native Texoma, a portmanteau of Texas and Oklahoma.  To give details here would entail spoilers, but the second job involves guarding the lives of two Russian Grigoris (think “magicians”, the term is derived from first name of the Russian mystic, Grigori Rasputin) who need to travel to Juarez, Mexico, in search of a “bleeder” for their ailing tsar.

 

    The tone of the story is darker and grittier than the other Charlaine Harris series I’m reading, the Sookie Stackhouse books.  Gunnie’s sharpshooting skills are complemented by her Grigori employers' abilities to cast spells, and both skills will be needed to the utmost against the numerous assassins sent to kill them.

 

    The worldbuilding is sparse, but adequate.  There’s a useful map at the beginning of the book to help you with the geography, and enough details in conversations by our three protagonists to give you some idea of the alternate history.

 

    The ending is suitably climactic.  Lizbeth returns home from her two jobs—well, you knew that because there are five more books in the series—and the matter of who sent all those assassins is cleared up.  Oh yeah, she may or may not have found a relative of hers along the way.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

    Hinky (adj.) : dishonest or suspect (a Yankeeism).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.4/5 based on 5,5496 ratings and 484 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.85/5 based on 18,925 ratings and 2,428 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    Before we went to sleep, Eli cast a spell around our campsite strong enough to keep a bear out, he told me.  His hands moved, and his lips, too.  I watched.  Paulina didn’t.  She trusted him to do it right.

    I’d never seen anything like this.  Eli seemed all wrapped up in strength.

    “If this spell of yours will keep bears out, why do you need me?” I said.

    “It won’t keep out bullets,” he said.

    That was a good answer.  “I’ll keep watch tonight,” I said.  (pg. 94)

 

    The witch the night before, she had been both a beautiful woman and an ancient crone, and I didn’t know which was her real face.  The not knowing, it made me queasy.

    Not only that, but the Grigoris could take life in weird and horrible ways.  Removing the blood.  Sucking away the soul.  In comparison, gunshots seemed honest and straightforward.  I knew that wasn’t fair.  Dead was dead.  (pg. 153)

 

Kindle Details…

    Currently An Easy Death sells for $9.99 at Amazon.  Books 2 through 5 cost the same; Book 6 is priced at $12.99.  Charlaine Harris has five other series where she is the sole author, plus several more where she collaborates with other authors.  Amazon lists a total of 169 Kindle titles by her.  Prices are generally in the $3.99-$14.99 range.

 

“What an interesting situation,” she said.  “Who killed me?”  (pg. 263)

    There was a fair amount of profanity in An Easy Death; but the 18 cusswords I noted in the first 20% were about what I expected.  There are also a number of adult situations, including a rape, several rolls-in-the-hay, and references to a certain part of the anatomy.  Needless to say, there’s a lot of bloodshed as well.

 

    There was one minor continuity issue.  Gunnie notices a woman carrying “Marcial’s rifle”, which was odd, since no one of that name had yet appeared in the text.  A backstory shows up a couple pages later, muchly appreciated, but it would’ve been better to have that explanation when Gunnie initially saw the rifle.

 

    The big issue I had with An Easy Death, and which was noted also by several other reviewers, was the repetitiveness of the storytelling.  We travel with Gunnie and her clients and friends through lots of towns, facing baddies galore, shooting them and getting shot at, but without any advancement of the plotline of who’s trying to kill them and why. Even when that answer is finally found, I was left with the feeling of “is that all there is?”

 

    Still, maybe this was just intended to be an introduction to an alternate world, with a compelling storyline relegated to the next book, A Longer Fall, which I have on my Kindle.  At both Amazon and Goodreads, the ratings do tend to trend upward as the series progresses.

 

    6 Stars.  One last thing.  At one point our travelers come across hex signs on a farm, being used to make sure no one steals its chickens.  I grew up in Pennsylvania Dutch country, where such symbols can still be seen on the sides of barns, put there for good luck.  Awesomeness!