so this book was interesting. It was kinda depressing too.
I liked her coyote familiar. ( )

This book was kind of a slog. Interesting in theory -- kind of a modern-day western, kind of steampunky in the use of alchemy, kind of a romance. And after that many kind ofs, I stopped caring. The magic's a little too dark for me. The people are a little too horrible to each other. The mysteries just never really resolve. And while Sig, the coyote sidekick, is cool, Petra just isn't enough of a badass to sell the adventure. Interesting, but not delightful. ( )

I am a big fan of urban fantasy, but not so much westerns, so I was a little ambivalent about reading Dark Alchemy by Laura Bickle, which would be classified more as contemporary fantasy than urban. It ended up being so good that I immediately ordered the second book in the series, as Dark Alchemy ends on a bit of a cliff-hanger. Lauded as a cross between “Breaking Bad” and Stephen King’s Gunslinger (haven’t watched the former or read the latter), Dark Alchemy seems to fall into a genre all its own, with hints of native American mythology and medieval alchemy running through the book.
Petra Dee, a geologist, travels to Temperance, Wyoming, to try to find information about her father who has been missing for many years. She is escaping memories of a deadly oil rig explosion which cost her a job and the life of her lover. What she finds in Temperance is a run-down trailer, a strange magical artifact, a drunken native American seer, a coyote familiar and a whole lot of trouble brewing between the local drug dealer/alchemist and a brutal rancher with a strange control over what she comes to find out are called The Hanged Men. Petra has a lot of courage and is headstrong in ways that sometimes seem foolish, but her desire to find answers to her father’s disappearance drives her to dive head first into danger without thinking of the consequences. The ending, as I said, is somewhat of a cliff-hanger, and pretty dark at that. But I was so excited to see that there is a sequel, and am looking forward to diving into it soon to learn more about Petra’s adventures with The Hanged Men and her coyote sidekick, Sig.
( )

Interesting and different take on alchemy. ( )

A fun read reminiscent of Charlaine Harris. ( )