Review: A Low Country by Morgan Shank
Blurb:
Everything went to hell in the first week.
After four years on the road, Sharla was looking forward to settling down and trying her hand at a steadier occupation. When Claws raid her town and take her lover, Renn, she knows it's time for action. She's tired of running. Now, she'll take a stand.
To do this, she'll have to follow the Claws across the tablelands. This is a land of bandits, mages, and monsters. If she wants to travel this country and rescue Renn, she'll need help. An army of Watchmen would be nice. Maybe even a drug cartel.
However, she also knows it's best to keep things small. The more allies she has, the more she risks a future knife between the ribs.
After all, this is Low Country.
Review:
With enough yee-haws to go around, A Low Country is sure to scratch that itch for those who want a little more wild west with their fantasy novels.
Following Sharla, a resident of the Old West analogue called Low Country, our plot boils down to one of revenge and rescue. A group of bandits called the Claws raids Sharla’s town and kidnaps her lover, and so she puts together a team to track down the Claws, take them down, and bring her lover home. Matters are complicated by the presence of not only drug cartels running a turf war, but also the colonel Kine of the law-abiding Watchmen, who has a pronounced interest in Sharla’s comings and goings. What follows is a fast-paced journey with betrayals, justice, magic, and secrets that is sure to excite.
The weird western setting of A Low Country is really where Shank shines. The inspiration from Red Country by Joe Abercrombie is immediately apparent in this book. We have the typical arrangement of sheriffs, bandits, shootouts, and standoffs, but the Low Country has such a well-defined and -explored history in the span of a couple hundred pages. Themes of ambition, duty, greed, and family are at the heart of this book, and while none of it is revolutionary, all of it is done remarkably well. Action scenes are exciting, too, with intense moments, high stakes, and inventive rune-based magic leaping off the page. Several scenes are quite pulse-pounding, and their frequency really helps elevate the rest of the novel.
Some small issues do run the book aground before it could reach new heights, though. While the prose is well-written, repetitive phrases rear their ugly heads enough for it to be noticeable, specifically the constant use of “as though he/she/it was/were etc.” Additionally, character arcs, apart from Sharla and Kine’s, felt a bit undercooked, which may have been a consequence of the shorter length of the novel. And while the main plot threads are tied up nicely, some of the subplots felt a little underbaked and rushed.
That said, none of these issues are really to the detriment of the book overall, and it might be a bit more nitpicky. The interwoven narratives of Sharla and Kine are written very well, and there’s enough here for Shank to put his own spin on the fantasy/western mashup genre and keep it fresh. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but given how well it’s written, it didn’t need to. It didn’t stay too long, but it didn’t overstay its welcome either.
And at the end of the day, A Low Country is simply a fun read. It’s fast-paced with a lot of heart and some really memorable moments, and I’m certainly looking forward to continuing with the series in the future.
