Ah, I love this series, and book #4 is a great addition to the ongoing story! Because I’ve basically read them all in a row, I didn’t bother reading the synopsis before starting The Serpent in Heaven… and was very startled to realize that we’d shifted main character and point of view!

In the first three books in the Gunnie Rose series, all events have been narrated by (and centered around)… well… Gunnie Rose herself. Lizbeth Rose, a sharpshooter/gunslinger from the nation of Texoma, whose skill with guns keeps her and her crew safe and protected, has been the focal point of the series, even as we meet her network of friends, allies, and (in book #1) her previously unknown half-sister Felicia.

The 3rd book ends with Lizbeth happily married and relatively safe with her beloved Eli back in Texoma, after a dangerous rescue mission in the Holy Russian Empire (our California and Oregon), so I suppose it shouldn’t have been a complete surprise to see the focus shift elsewhere. Let Lizbeth have a little downtime!

In this 4th book, Lizbeth’s younger sister Felicia takes center stage. Felicia has always been something of a question mark. When we first meet her, she appears to be about age 10 or 11, raised in poverty in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico by an unreliable father — a Russian grigori (magician) barely getting by, with a very shady past, who also happens to be Lizbeth’s father. When Lizbeth discovers Felicia, she’s on her own and unprotected, and Lizbeth decides to see her safely sheltered in San Diego, where she can get an education at the grigori school… and also fulfill her destiny as a blood donor for the ailing Tsar.

What’s been hinted at, but finally becomes clear here, is that Felicia has a store of great magical power herself, and that she’s also quite a few years older than she appeared to be. With her father’s influence now gone, the anti-aging spells he’d placed on her have dissipated, and Felicia has quickly grown into the size and appearance of her true age, fifteen.

Felicia also becomes the subject of a botched kidnapping plot, and soon learns that her mother was the descendant of a powerful magical family in Mexico, who now want Felicia back. What follows is a dangerous scheme to gain control of Felicia, involving raids on the school and other types of interference and infiltration. Meanwhile, the school and the city are ravaged by the Spanish influenza, and Felicia finds herself needing to draw on her strange new powers in order to survive and protect the people she cares about.

As the story unfolds, Felicia really blossoms as a lead character, and her alliance with the older, powerful grigori Felix as well as her puppy-love first romance with Peter give her interesting characters to bounce off of (and get into trouble with). The involvement of her maternal family adds a huge element of threat and conspiracy, and the action is quite good and unrelenting.

While the main plot threads are mostly tied up by the end of the book, there are many open questions still to be resolved. I really enjoyed Felicia as the main character, although I missed spending time with Lizbeth and Eli and can’t wait to see them back in action.

The series continues with book #5, All the Dead Shall Weep, to be published in September. At this point, I’m totally invested and can’t wait for more (so I may need to read the ARC for #5 early, rather than waiting until the publication date is a little closer).

I’m so glad I was introduced to this terrific series thanks to my book group. Highly recommended!

Call me hooked. I read An Easy Death, the first book in Charlaine Harris’s Gunnie Rose series, just a few months ago when my book group chose it for our January book of the month. Since then, I’ve been dying for more, and this month finished book #2 (A Longer Fall) and now, #3 (The Russian Cage).

For those not familiar with the series, the Gunnie Rose books take place in an alternate history in which the United States no longer exists, having broken up into a handful of separate countries in the early 1930s or thereabouts. Main character Lizbeth Rose is a gunslinger (a profession known as “gunnies”), a sharpshooter who works for hire protecting people or cargos, and using her wicked aim with a Colt when needed to carry out her job. At age 20, she’s wise and skilled beyond her years, and has had more than her share of adventures.

Lizbeth lives in the country of Texoma (the lands formerly known as Texas and Oklahoma), and her life has a distinctly Wild West feel to them. Her adventures in the past two books left her entangled with Russian magicians — grigoris — and here in The Russian Cage, the entanglement continues.

Our California and Oregon, in the world of Gunnie Rose, are the Holy Russian Empire, ruled by the Tsar and filled with an odd mix of Russian refugee descendants and former Americans. The HRE is the home base of most powerful grigoris — and Eli, the man Lizbeth loves, just happens to be one of these.

As The Russian Cage opens, Lizbeth receives word that Eli is in danger. He’s been arrested and imprisoned, but no one in his family seems to know why. Lizbeth is determined to do whatever it takes to set Eli free, and travels to San Diego, the HRE capitol, to carry out her dangerous plan.

Once there, she quickly becomes involved in unraveling the political forces at play, protecting Eli’s family, and ingratiating herself with the Tsar and Tsarina, among other crazy events. Lizbeth is determined to not just save Eli, but to ensure the safety of his entire family, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to achieve her goals.

The action in The Russian Cage is exciting and fast-paced, and I loved the mix of personal connections and perilous escapades that make up the bulk of the story. Lizbeth and Eli continue to have amazing chemistry, and their love story is the true payoff for this action/adventure story.

At this point, I absolutely have to continue! As soon as book #4 is available from my library — tomorrow, perhaps? — I’ll be diving in. I love the world Charlaine Harris has created in these books, and I adore the characters.

In the Gunnie Rose books, author Charlaine Harris has created an alternate version of the United States… in which the United States no longer exists. In this world, FDR was assassinated prior to being inaugurated as President, and in the aftermath, the US has split into separate countries. Main character Lizbeth Rose lives in Texoma, more or less where our current Texas is, and the US South is now the country of Dixie, where racism, sexism, and xenophobia are the norms — a place where Lizbeth has no interest in going, until she’s hired on for a job that will take her there.

Lizbeth is a “gunnie”, a gifted shooter whose sharp reflexes and dead-eye aim make her a valued member of any gun crew, typically hired for escort and protection work. After her last crew ended up dead (see book one in the series, An Easy Death), she’s found work with a new set of gunnies, and takes an eastbound train to bring cargo into Dixie.

Nothing goes as planned, naturally. The train rail is sabotaged, the gun crew is attacked, and the cargo is stolen. Lizbeth finds herself stranded in Dixie, until her former colleague and lover Eli shows up, also in pursuit of the same cargo. Eli is a “grigori” — a wizard of the Holy Russian Empire (formerly California and Oregon), a land ruled by the Tsar and protected by the highly skilled magicians who support him. Eli’s arrival shows that Lizbeth’s cargo is much more precious than she realized, and the two of them must work together to retrieve it, get it to its intended destination, and hopefully make it out of Dixie with their lives.

Once again, I truly enjoyed the world-building. Lizbeth herself is a Western-style gunslinger, but here, she’s thrust into a world that expects her to wear a dress and hose, defer to men, and be altogether proper and ladylike. The contrast is delicious, and it’s such fun to see Lizbeth’s discomfort and rebellion at these ridiculous sexist restrictions.

Meanwhile, Lizbeth and Eli have terrific chemistry, and it’s a delight to see them back together. Their work and their families destine them to have very different lives, but for the space of this adventure, they’re reunited and fully cognizant of the love and passion they share. They also make for great partners, having each other’s backs and getting one another out of impossibly dangerous situations.

Dixie is full of despicable racists, and the overall mission and the missing cargo relate to an attempt to kick off a rebellion and put an end to oppression. The cargo itself is a total MacGuffin — it’s a bit nonsensical, but as a plot catalyst, it keeps the action going full steam ahead and makes for some exciting sequences. Not all the events make a ton of sense, but there is a certain satisfaction in seeing awful characters get exactly what they deserve.