Okay so I first want to say I received a copy of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to get books and review them.

That being said: 1) I'm not sure why I requested this when I find the entire genre of western to be frankly irredeemable, at least when written by white folks, and 2) I had no idea going into it that it would be a Christian western which just makes everything all the more complicated and weird.

The best thing I can say about this book is that it was short, and perhaps that it could have more racist than it was. That being said, it was still pretty fuckin racist in all the ways you expect a western novel to be racist; the main character had lived with an (at first unidentified) Native American nation after his family was killed, and they gifted him with an "Indian name," completely ignoring everything about specificity of nation, adoptive practices, naming practices, etc. Then that character spent time with the Cheyenne where he learned apparently how to murder good? How to track good? It was terrible. Then there was a character who was "Sioux" (which, sure, some folks who are Lakota and Dakota might say it that way because white settlers like me don't know any better) who had been to a Christian school and therefore was articulate but mostly was very silent and stoic. (I think I literally highlighted that part and wrote "I want to die.")

And that's just the kind of genre-typical racism, and doesn't even get to the weird mechanics of the book! I have never been a stickler in my life for "show, don't tell," because I think that sort of phrasing is kind of vague and unhelpful, but OH MY GOD this book is a prime example of how telling is way less effective storytelling than showing. And that feels mean to say but again, it's not something I would usually say except that it's so obvious in this book! The plot also feels like... like by the end, the final arcs of all the stories had been wrapped up neatly, but at first it was so hard to separate what was more of a side or establishing plot versus what the actual conflict in the story was going to be? Again, may be a genre thing, I don't read a lot of books like this, but BOY was it weird and made the story feel way more complicated than it needed to be.

You might like this if you uh just really love westerns and are comfortable in the genre? I'm not sure the Christian part of it was any added great element (or if it was supposed to be? are all westerns kinda Christian at their core? I don't know and I don't care to find out!) but as a person who isn't super comfortable with overt Christian tones to stories, I would say that for the most part that element made me roll my eyes but I wasn't like so uncomfortable I couldn't keep going? It wasn't as horrific to me as the overt racism, at least. ( )