User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
Marketed as “Weird West” this takes a page from Orson Scott Card’s Alvin Maker series with an alternate history West with magic.
Hayley Stone’s 2018 publication keeps the magic on the down low and delivers a minimalistic tale of western themes, romance, and revenge.
I was first struck by her talent. Stone is good writer and her ability shines through in every page, she knows how to describe a scene and turn a phrase. Told from the first person narrative of Marshall “Apostle” Richardson, this follows Richardson’s pursuit and later friendship with noted outlaw Almena Guillory, the Grizzly Queen of the West, who also has some magic up her sleeve. Guillory also has some secrets in her past and she’s not as bad as we would first believe.
Stone sets the tone and conveys an entertaining western fantasy.
*** A free copy of this book was provided in exchange for an honest review
Rating: really liked it
“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised…” “Proverbs 31.”
I admit I haven’t read much westerns, movies yes, but this book has been an atypical western and magic laced story worth reading! The first person is superbly managed. The characters are very well described and realistic. The protagonist-Apostle- a down to earth Marshall with his own personal demons. An alleged criminal, The Grissly Queen with strange powers. A cross country ride, full of intrigue, bank robbers, criminals, I could hear the typical western music in the background whilst reading! The writing is an excellent prose, easy to read. And yet, it holds a wealth of profoundness in its simplicity. The eternal internal debate of good versus bad, moments of faith and morality taken to its very limits. A unique concept of the Wild West merged with gifted powers seen from a religious point of view. This story has both, the thought provoking situations and moments, and a fun action/adventure. Gritty and tension filled scenes, I was hooked from the beginning!
I received an early version of this book from the publisher and my review is entirely voluntary.
Rating: really liked it
Make Me No Grave by Harley Stone and narrated by Oliver Wyman is a western with a bit of supernatural added to it. A strong female lead as the bad guy and a true good sheriff in a land where even that is unique. The story is about how they end up riding together despite there differences and each growing emotional while together. She also has a special gift.
Very action packed and made me feel like I was in the dusty, crude Midwest in a very lawless time.
The narration was performed brilliantly!
Rating: really liked it
I wrote this book. I had a lot of fun with this story, and hope you enjoy it, too!
Rating: really liked it
Damn this was good!!!
This right here is the book I never knew I needed Ever have a book call to you? Especially a book that is so far out of your comfort zone that you're thrown into a loop. Well this book wasn't just calling to me it was screaming "READ ME!" and the truth is I still don't why. Because me and westerns usually don't happen, but damn I glad I listened! I was entirely engrossed! This is the type of book that makes you impatient to see what happens next! Because it just keeps getting better and better! What also makes this book so great is the characters.
First off Apostle Richardson
Cowboys are so not my type but Apostle won my heart! So damn charming I just can't...
As for Almena
I loved her to pieces!
This is so not a romance but oh and how I shipped those two I kept telling myself
and when I got "THAT MOMENT" well let's just say nobody could wipe the stupid smile off my face.
All and all if you're looking for a great read look no further than Make Me No Grave
Rating: really liked it
3.5 StarsNathan or "Apostle" as he's nicknamed is the U.S. Marshall tasked with apprehending Almena "The Grizzly Queen". Liked the slow friendship, and romance formed between these two, bringing out the unexpected in each other. I'd love more, but it ended in a great place, too. Enjoyed the bit of supernatural element.
Oliver Wyman's narration was excellent, made me feel like I was watching an old Western!
Rating: really liked it
This is the book you didn't know you needed. But you do. You really do.
I came to this book in an interesting way. The publisher is new and I was looking at their page, kind of checking them out and saw this book and thought to myself that it wasn't my normal thing, but that it looked interesting. I reached out to see if they'd give me an early copy so I could check it out. They did.
I put the short version of what I thought into a blurb: Combines the best elements of western and fantasy for a thrilling ride that won't let you go.
The longer version is this:
You probably aren't sitting there thinking 'Hey, I need a fantasy-western mashup.' And that's what this is. Calling it a flintlock fantasy isn't really accurate, because it doesn't feel like a fantasy. It feels like a western. Except there's a super-cool, original magic element to it. But even that isn't enough to explain what makes it so good.
This is an exceptional story. The characters are superbly drawn, well rounded, and make you want to follow them. It's very well written. The pace is outstanding and the prose crisp. And there's a depth and themes to the writing that you might not expect from what, on the surface, looks like a pulpy, fun romp. The book delves into religion and how it drives a man (The main character is a religious man, and how he deals with that in conjunction with the difficult things he has to do is fascinating), attraction, love, and a lot of other things that will make you think. Or, alternately, you can just turn off your brain and enjoy the careening ride. I love books that work in multiple ways like this one does.
If you're a fan of westerns, if you're a fan of fantasy, or if you're just a fan of great writing and superb story, I strongly recommend you check this book out. It's a small press book and it's very reasonably priced on kindle.
Rating: really liked it
I won a copy of the audiobook version and I'm counting myself lucky because Makes Me No Grave was superb. It's primarily a western with some supernatural and alternate history mixed in. All of this falls outside of what I would normally read but Stone does a great job of balancing each element and making the story feel authentic. To add to that, Oliver Wyman absolutely nailed it as the voice narration on the audiobook, sounding exactly what I think a gritty and worn lawman would be like. From what I understand, the publisher, Aethon Books, is a brand new publisher of sci fi and this is their first offering. Based on the story here and the quality of the audiobook, they have a new fan.
Rating: really liked it
I'm DNF'ing this at 52% but still rounding up from 2.5 to 3 stars. It's not a bad read, and the audio is great, it's just not my cup of tea. I was expecting something less Western-y I think, which was dumb, coz, you know what? It's a Western. With a (tiny) bit of a supernatural twist.
Rating: really liked it
I was surprised and delighted by Hayley's previous hard SF novels. I jumped at a chance to get my hands on a review copy of Make Me No Grave. To be honest, I haven't read that many true Westerns in my life--the only one I can recall was in middle school, for English class. But I enjoy a good fantasy and a good trip through Westworld, so why NOT enjoy a fantasy set in the Wild West?
Deep, well-written characters are the beating heart of this novel, as they are in all the best stories. This is an adventure tale about the strongest idealist in the West, and a hard-riding criminal who knows that everything isn't always as ideal as it seems. The biggest outlaw in the West has a heart and the best of reasons for what she does, they don't always align neatly with black and white defintions of good and evil defined by law and religion. Add in some bank robbers, steam engines, and frontier-style justice, and you're going to be in for a really good adventure.
Well-paced and well-written, with an original magic system, this is the fresh fantasy novel you don't know you've been waiting for.
Rating: really liked it
A western with elements of romance, supernatural, and alternate history too. I picked this up on Audible's Daily Deal, not knowing anything about it, and I'm so glad I did! Wow! It's an action-filled story with lots of heart, and an amazing cast of characters that will keep you turning pages. The story focuses on lawman Apostle Richardson, and his encounters with 'notorious female outlaw' Almena Guillory, whose actions eventually lead him to question his moral code of justice and right and wrong.
This western has all the action and adventure you'd expect, but it's sweetened with charm, wit, and attraction of the two MC's, Apostle and Alamena. Their characters have a lot of depth and background to them, and although they start out on opposite sides of the law, the lines are quickly blurred, and you'll soon be rooting for them both!
The audio narration by Oliver Wyman was brilliant, most especially for Apostle, with his gritty western drawl, but for all the other characters too! I highly recommend this book on audio for the full western experience.
Rating: really liked it
For the most part, this was the story of Federal Marshal Apostle Richardson's journey from moral certainty and scrupulous rule-following to a world-view that accommodates moral ambiguity and the need to act in accordance with his conscience even if that means not following the law to the letter.
Two things drive this journey. The first is his encounter with a notorious outlaw who turns out not to be who he expected her to be. The second is his recognition that his rigid rule-following is partly attributable to his determination not to be like his violent and often drunken father. He begins to wonder if he follows the rules not because he believes in them but because he worries that if he stops his true nature will emerge and he will become his father.
I know, I know. This is a Weird West story, filled with outlaws, bank robberies, lynchings, lawless towns, vengeful posses, gunfights, knife fights, murders, attacks on stagecoaches and locomotives and the occasional miraculous healing, and I'm making it sound very dry. It's not that dry, but it's not a wild tale of derring-do either. This is, at its heart, a morality tale.
I had a good time with it. Apostle Richardson is an easy man to travel with. He's passionate and action-oriented but he punctuates that with moments of reflection. He has a likely-to-be-fatal need to be heroic and stand up for what's right even in the face of overwhelming odds but at least he recognises that compulsion as an aberration worthy of analysis.
The outlaw Almena Guillory is nicely-drawn and cliché-free. Accepting her miraculous power to heal other people's wounds by taking them onto herself and or passing them on to others is no more of a stretch than being asked to accept the reality of vampires or werewolves in an Urban Fantasy novel. I had to work a little harder to suspend my disbelief enough to accept that she passed as a male officer in the Union Arm, saw combat in the War Between The States and that she was part of Abraham Lincoln's entourage.
What I had no difficulty in believing was the way in which she dealt with Richardson. She saw him clearly and knew exactly which buttons to press. The relationship between the two of them is not a romance so much as a continuous reassessment of each other and themselves.
There were a couple of times when what seem to me to be anachronisms jarred me out of the story: the use by both Guillory and Richardson of twenty-first-century gender pronouns when describing someone who didn't self-identify as male or female seemed unlikely in Kansas in the late nineteenth-century (especially given the ongoing hostility to trans people in modern day Kansas); and having one of the few female characters explain to Guillory that she wanted to 'change the narrative' around the opportunities open to women felt totally out of place.
Still, the plot was clever. It propelled the action forward and kept me guessing at the outcome and made the whole story more entertaining. I found the resolution quite pleasing, partly because it side-stepped convention and remained true to the natures of Richardson and Guillory.
Rating: really liked it
Wow, round this up to 4.5 stars. I never expect anything I get recommended for free on Bookbub to be, well, decent, but this was a marvelous surprise, a western (which I love) fused with some lite!fantasy and magic elements, WRITTEN BY A WOMEN. Now the latter is essential to note, because everything you might regret about typical westerns (if you're me at least) is the horrible treatment of women and minorities, most often in the form of sexual assault or outright violence. Nah, this book turns all that on its head.
The protagonist, a blonde white guy who nevertheless manages some good, open-minded thinking and acting that would never, EVER fly in a real western, really takes the backseat to Almena Guillory, the Lady Outlaw/HBIC/sorta witch he's supposed to arrest in the beginning. The final showdown is between her and another lady, which was very cool too. I found myself highlighting several great lines by the protagonist, but again, some of it almost felt shoe-horned in because the typical dude-in-a-western is a misogynist, arrogant prick who loves bloodletting shootouts. Not Apostle Richardson, which even if implausible, I enjoyed immensely.
A few random notes. One, this book has a HILARIOUS preoccupation with the evacuation of one's bladder immediately post-mortem. There were at least three cases where the author went out of her way to mention a "dark stain that wasn't blood" spreading beneath dying victims, and I dunno, my mind clung to these things. LOL.
Two, the unique magic in this book. I am always on the lookout for unique magic forms, and Almena's fleshmagic is super cool.
Three, the diverse range of characters we come across/the sort of mental reparations & apolgoies Apostle tries to make for his fellow white countrymen. Almena, badass lady villain that she supposedly is, has a cool scene where she's using her magic to heal Osage tribe members who were attacked by white settlers. She also has an Asian nonbinary friend they need help from at one point, and crossdressed herself, pretending to be a man in the Civil War.
Overall, much more and much BETTER than I expected from a free book!
Rating: really liked it
SUPER FAST REVIEW:
I love fantasy and I love westerns. I expected to be more into this.
Don’t get me wrong, there is stuff I liked. Almena is a very interesting character, the narrative is well written, there are some emotional bits and it has an interesting tone overall.
Unfortunately it is slower paced than I would have liked, it’s a bit predictable and I wasn’t really able to get into the story and I didn’t care for the ending.
That being said I wasn’t sure whether or not to give this 2 or 3 stars. I decided 3 because I wouldn’t consider it bad and things got a little more intense at the end.
That being said, would I recommend it? No. Would I read a sequel? Nah. Would I say it’s bad though? Nope. Does this author have potential? Yeah.
3/5
Rating: really liked it
Apostle Richardson is the quintessential good guy, who thinks right and wrong is generally a straightforward distinction. But when he encounters Almena Guillory, a notorious yet beguiling outlaw who saves his life with flesh magic despite knowing he intends to arrest her, his moral code is thrown for a loop. When she escapes his custody and goes on the run, Richardson’s pursuit of her becomes all-consuming—and not just because he wants to catch a wanted criminal. There’s a lot to love here, but my favorite part was the setting—southeast Kansas, where much of my husband’s family is from. It was a hoot to hear familiar names like Cherryvale, Coffeyville, and Baxter Springs called out. I listened to the audio version, and narrator Oliver Wyman is fantastic—he nails Richardson’s gravelly twang.
