No Land For Heroes

Dragons & Ghost Elves & Robberies, oh my!

Friends, please bear with me on this. I loved this book so much that I'm overwhelmed with how on Earth to write a cohesive review.

How did this happen? I'm helping Team Bookborn judge for SPFBO this year and one of my books was a Fantasy Western, ( WHERE BLOOD RUNS GOLD by A.C. Cross, go read it!!) which I'd never read before, unless you count THE GUNSLINGER, which that one is sort of on an island by itself, in my opinion. After getting a taste of Fantasy Western, I wanted more.

Author Cal Black saw my feelers I put out for more of this genre and let me know of this one they had and before I even finished reading THE FIRST SENTENCE of the book description, I had purchased this book on my Kindle and I was gone. Well, actually I immediately emailed the author back and went ahead and asked if I could get my hands on the ARC for the second book that's on the horizon. I HAD NO SHAME. I read it every chance I got until I finished it.

What is it about? I'll give y'all more than what I gave myself, which I stopped reading the summary as soon as I got to DRAGONS. (Wonder how many folks I just lost here while they go to grab the book immediately...YES THERE ARE DRAGONS IN THE AMELIOR WILD WEST! *squees*) This tale opens up with a heist in progress - a train robbery! (Can you get any more Western? Yes, we can and we do!) But Lezlie, you say, I thought you said this was a fantasy Western? I did friend, the crew robbing the train is comprised of an albino elf, an arroyan, a human woman - among others. In true Wild West fashion, this heist doesn't go without a hitch in this crew's giddyup - when the elf, Millie, lights an arrow to fire into the air as a signal, she accidentally hits a dragon! After that, it all gets sideways REAL QUICK. Honestly, when that happened, everything paused in my mind like it used to in the old show, The Dukes of Hazzard, when the narrator would make some hilarious quip like, "Buckle up, ladies. This might get exciting."

The train heist is what starts a chain reaction of events, cons, adventures, mysteries and revelations that keeps the reader so caught up in the action and exhilarated - I kept thinking to myself that at some point, things would slow down for a bit, but it didn't. If there wasn't something making my heart pound because of the action, then I was falling in love with the characters and the relationships formed. CAL BLACK CAN WRITE AMAZING CHARACTERS AND RELATIONSHIPS! First, my heart was melting because of the relationship between a character and the man who adopted him...then it melted again because of those same two and the one's daughter. Then I was dying over the friendships...and a little bit of a romance...AND A SHOTGUN WEDDING! My heart almost couldn't take all the love that was filling it up.

There are some delightful magical creatures all throughout this story, which make living out in this setting very dangerous. I want to tell you about some of them so bad!!! It's really difficult not to just go full on spoilers here, lol. I also found out different races had different magical abilities, which made them unique and fun to learn about. Religion? Yep, we had different belief systems too! This story literally has everything - but the reader is never overwhelmed by all the information, it's not all thrown at you at once or info dumped, it's all introduced and explained in the natural progression of the story.

I want to tell you all the things I love, but I would spoil all of the wonderful elements of this amazing story that begins in NO LAND FOR HEROES and continues in the sequel that is expected to be published in March 2023. This was an amazing read that has absolutely cemented my love for not only this series, but for the Fantasy Western subgenre as well.

I cannot recommend this one highly enough!