Review: ‘Wake of Vultures’ by Lila Bowen

A rich, dark fantasy of destiny, death, and the supernatural world hiding beneath the surface.

Nettie Lonesome lives in a land of hard people and hard ground dusted with sand. She’s a half-breed who dresses like a boy, raised by folks who don’t call her a slave but use her like one. She knows of nothing else. That is, until the day a stranger attacks her. When nothing, not even a sickle to the eye can stop him, Nettie stabs him through the heart with a chunk of wood, and he turns into black sand.

And just like that, Nettie can see.

But her newfound sight is a blessing and a curse. Even if she doesn’t understand what’s under her own skin, she can sense what everyone else is hiding — at least physically. The world is full of evil, and now she knows the source of all the sand in the desert. Haunted by the spirits, Nettie has no choice but to set out on a quest that might lead to her true kin… if the monsters along the way don’t kill her first.

A historical fantasy about a half Native American, half African American bisexual girl who dresses like a man? This is the book I didn’t know I needed till I had it. Delilah S. Dawson (writing here as Lila Bowen) is one of my favourite authors, and I confess that I probably wouldn’t have picked this up if she hadn’t written it — not for any particular reason, just because I don’t usually read books set in the American Wild West (or a facsimile thereof). So Wake of Vultures would never have even crossed my radar.

And that would’ve been a tragedy, because Nettie Lonesome’s story is a cracking read. The action whisks you along, and it doesn’t get bogged down in self-reflection — though there is certainly a bit of that, as poor Nettie has received exactly no education and, as other characters keep telling her, has a lot to learn about people. Consequently, she is baffled by notions like bisexuality or why a woman would actually choose to wear skirts rather than pretending to be a man.

From my (admittedly white, non-American) perspective, Dawson/Bowen handled the issues of race and gender identity with tact. There’s no stereotyping — there are good and bad guys both white and “Injun” (as Nettie refers to them, given she was raised by whites; the phrase is something the author acknowledges is not PC these days but would have been accurate in the 1800s Texas that Durango is based off). Even the monsters have a range of good and bad types.

As far as the monsters go, if there’s a method to determining the ones we encounter then it isn’t made clear to Nettie — and therefore us — in this book what that is. There are vampires, harpies, werewolves, skinwalkers, the Cannibal Owl (a Native American bogeyman), dwarves and bludbunnies (a critter from Dawson’s steampunk series). I guess European-mythology creatures can emigrate just as easily as Europeans can!

I enjoyed the other characters, particularly Winifred — who is the first female Nettie really gets to know who is happy and proud to be female — and Sam Hennessey, one of her fellow Rangers. There is a hint of romance in the story, but if you only like your romance to include kissing scenes and heavy petting, you won’t find any of that here (the closest we come to a kissing scene actually made me cringe for poor Nettie and the other party). I actually liked that, though. Nettie is so confused by who she is and what she wants that if she’d jumped into the sack with someone it would’ve seemed very out of character.

I can’t wait for the next book in the series, Horde of Crows. The ending isn’t a cliffhanger per se, but it sure left me wanting more.