BLOOD VENDETTA

A trio of deadly hunters descend upon a dystopian American West in Sechi’s debut novel.

A future Big Calamity has reshaped the face of North America. The Western Lands, as they are now known—places like Kalifornia, Texarcana, the Borderlands, and the Wild Frontier—share only a vague, bloody resemblance to their former geographies. In these parched landscapes of dune and mountain, whoever controls the water is king, and the only law is that of the gun. The Vigilante, a bounty hunter with yellow eyes—proof of his partial Indigenous ancestry—rides from town to town in pursuit of bounties while dealing out whatever justice he sees fit to dispense. Yma Omari, a female assassin from the Far Eastern island of Nihon, crosses the Western Lands in search of the old enemies who murdered her father. Indiego is a medicine man who takes breaks from his vision-quests to hunt the outlaw El Diablo and his gang of murderers. El Diablo himself is searching for a buried treasure promised to him by his deceased mentor hidden somewhere in the Bloodlands. As the Vigilante, Yma, and Indiego pursue their various agendas, all are led down the treacherous Dead Roads to tangle with cannibals, cultists, and even deadlier villains. Sechi’s prose luxuriates in this apocalyptic West, which seems drawn in equal parts from Blood Meridian, The Dark Tower, and Kill Bill: “A desolate region scored with snaking canyons, stoney hills, and patches of desert and dry chaparral…A sanctuary for those seeking to evade the bounty hunters and man-trackers who, in this downtrodden age, all too often served as the only arbiters of law, justice, or even revenge.” It’s an unapologetically violent book—eight different people are shot dead by page 10—and the episodic plot seems designed to maximize the number of deadly standoffs. Sechi knows the product he wants to deliver, and he provides an addictive version of it. Like-minded readers will be immediately hooked.

A bloody, stylized smorgasbord of Western archetypes and fantasies.