#Bookreview – Guns of Perdition by Jessica Bakkers

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What Amazon says

IT TAKES GRACE TO HUNT WHEN IT’S DARKSOME

Jessie expects he’ll be forever cleaning up after the cowpokes of the Bad Hoss Saloon. That’s until the day a drifter strides through the doors, and blows away a blood-sucking demon, along with Jessie’s belief in an everyday world. Jessie is captivated by the enigmatic Grace, with her pearl-handled revolvers, and wolf companion. He throws in his normal life and follows her across the Wild West, as she hunts down and slays the evil creatures that roam the frontier.

Along the way, they seek the aid of a Native American warrior, cross paths with a Cajun Queen, and encounter a small-town tycoon with a deadly hunger for gold. Animosity and distrust plague Grace and Jessie, and their strange group of allies, but they must put their differences behind them if they’re to have any hope of finding and defeating the frontier’s true evil, the Darksome Gunman.

The Armageddon Showdown is a dark-fantasy, weird western series of epic proportions, focusing on the age-old battle between good and evil, though in the Wild West, it’s not always clear just who is good and who is evil.

Join Grace Dyer and her band of miscreants as they battle demons and demi-gods, in the frontier’s deadliest conflict…the Armageddon Showdown.

My review

The only other book I’ve read that would seem to fit into this genre is The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. His books did come to my mind, once or twice, while I read about this strange and frightening Western-based world created by Ms Bakkers.

Jessie is a young and innocent boy of seventeen when Grace Dryer, a bounty hunter with a penchant for hunting dark and evil creatures, walks into the saloon where he is working as a clean-up boy. His employer is unpleasant and selfish and so when Jessie makes a decision to help Grace and one of the prostitutes, who turns out to be an evil creature, is killed, he steals a horse and follows her into the wilderness to escape his current life.

Jessie quickly gets introduced to Grace’s unusual thoughts on accountability which basically boil down to a belief that creatures that act in a certain way due to instinct are not evil. They are merely behaving as they were effectively programmed to do by their creator. In Grace’s initial estimation, it is a choice to kill and act in a malicious and heinous manner that makes a creature or person evil. These initial introductions by the author to her interpretation of good versus evil continue and develop throughout the book as Ms Bakker’s leads the reader towards the religious based climax of this book.

The characterisation of Jessie was interesting and the author was clever as she portrayed his loss of innocence and the change in his character as previously unexperienced emotions such as jealously crept into his mind and heart. Some of Jessie’s decisions and actions were initially unexpected but it all comes together nicely by the end of the book.

Grace is a conflicted character and the reader vacillates between seeing her goodness and some of her poorer decisions and darker actions. The unfolding of her backstory in this book is well done and shed’s light on some of her characteristics and behaviours. Grace develops trust in Jessie which was rather an interesting plot twist.

On the whole, this is a well written and clever story and I cannot fault the editing in any way. People who enjoy weird creatures and horror will love this story but it is not for the squeamish as there are some scenes that are detailed and harsh on a reader’s stomach.

Purchase Guns of Perdition

About Jessica Bakkers

Jessica Bakkers

I am a creative writer with over twenty years of writing experience. I am a speculative fiction writer, and have written in the genres of fantasy-romance and paranormal-romance, however my genre of choice when it comes to writing for myself is dark fantasy where I can allow myself to fully explore the anti-hero characters that pepper my stories. I dabble at poetry and have written professionally for clients locally and internationally.

My debut novel, Guns of Perdition, The Armageddon Showdown Book 1, is a dark fantasy stroll through a weird wild west setting, pitting bad heroes against worse villains.

My major love affair is with the written word; specifically creative writing. I allow myself to indulge and rendezvous with this secret lover whenever time allows… and then we make beautiful poetry together!

Published by robertawrites235681907

I am a writer of young adult fiction and poetry

Published

75 thoughts on “#Bookreview – Guns of Perdition by Jessica Bakkers”

  1. I’ve heard good things about Jessica’s book. Excellent review, Robbie. Maybe somewhere down the road, I’ll pick it up, but I’ve got to get my overflowing Kindle a couple days off.

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  13. I’m sooo excited to read this book! I’m determined to get to it and post a review before Halloween – sounds perfect for this time of year (for me, anyway, lol). Awesome review, Robbie – congrats to Jessica!

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  15. Great review and insightful analysis of the characters, Robbie. I have no religious training, and yet, I thought the evolution of that aspect of the story was very well done, slowly revealed, and easily understood up to the giant, shocking climax. It’s an intense story with fascinating characters. And definitely gruesome at times. 😀

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