(Old West Fantasy) Six-gun rides into Dead Gulch and finds the townspeople don’t like “her kind,” but they have a mission for her: to kill the Dead Coon Trashgang. (7,875 words; Time: 26m)
Rating: ★☆☆☆☆ Needs Improvement
Recommended By: SFRevu:4"Six-Gun Vixen and the Dead Coon Trashgang," by Ashok K. Banker [bio] (edited by John Joseph Adams), appeared in Lightspeed Magazine issue 81, published on February 1, 2017.
Mini-Review (click to view--possible spoilers)
This is a Mary Sue story. (One where the author’s favoritism of the protagonist destroys suspension of disbelief.) Six-gun is so powerful that no fight is a fair fight, and she knows it. There's zero tension, as a result.
The story is weirdly preachy about prejudice against women and people of color at one moment, and then overtly homophobic in the next breath. That's unusual.
A few minor errors are annoying: a sovereign was a British coin, not an American one. Wolves don’t have retractable claws. How come the “entire population of Dead Gulch” had no women in it?
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 81)
Ashok K. Banker Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
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The story is weirdly preachy about prejudice against women and people of color at one moment, and then overtly homophobic in the next breath. That's unusual.
A few minor errors are annoying: a sovereign was a British coin, not an American one. Wolves don’t have retractable claws. How come the “entire population of Dead Gulch” had no women in it?
Other Reviews: Search Web, Browse Review Sites (Issue 81)
Ashok K. Banker Info: Interviews, Websites, ISFDB, FreeSFOnline
Follow RSR on Twitter, Facebook, RSS, or E-mail.
Yup. Really falls flat. Rarely am I disappointed in Lightspeed stories.
ReplyDeleteYeah, this was over-the-top violent and grotesque and just offensive.
ReplyDelete