Two outsiders have recently acquired the deed to the “busted” Argent Mountain Mine. That is quietly the most impressive thing about this book.Īs mentioned, Jim Negrey is running from trouble at home.

The characters bear their own truths, and the author manages to balance them. Belief is not, though, a substitute for morality (nor for reality). Belief inflects reality, particularly when you get into the weird stuff. There is difference, there is relativism, but it’s never an excuse for lazy storytelling or indecisive characters. He also handles a legitimately diverse cast with a deft touch. There’s never any sense that you’re bouncing back and forth between sets of tropes. Belcher does a great job of folding the weird into the western. On the other, we have two different ancient cults, angels, a great old one, the left eye of (a version of) the creator, Mormon relics, ghosts, and a head in jar. So we have, on one hand, standard elements of a Western: a young man with wanted posters out to prove himself, an unflappable sheriff, a Fancy Dan of a mayor, handsome widows and a cagey half-blooded American Indian. That list leaves out the Lilith-cult ninja, her daughter, and the story’s villains. Jim soon meets a variety of other characters, including a sheriff who cannot die until a particular day, a Mormon mayor who has to deal with both his sexuality and safeguarding the relics of Joseph Smith, and members of the Chinese Green Ribbon Tong.

He requires rescuing from the desert by a deputy who’s half capital-C Coyote and a man who’s got an unseemly fascination with dying. Our nominal protagonist, Jim Negrey, arrives in Golgotha with his father’s jade eye. Golgotha, the fictional Nevada town in which the story is set, is a magnet for the weird. Lovecraft.” That’s not far off, though Lovecraft lacks coyote spirits and mad science. Belcher describes it as “kind of Zane Grey meets H.P.

The Six-Gun Tarot is a “Weird West” book.

Belcher has a long resume in journalism he also has an urban fantasy series published by Tor. The next book in the Golgotha series, The Shotgun Arcana, is out, with a third book, The Queen of Swords, due out sometime this year. It’s relatively recent, published in 2013. Belcher’s The Six-Gun Tarot is a random library grab.

The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher