Book Review: Janie by Kendall Roberts

IndieBookView

February 1

Janie

by Kendall Roberts

Genre: Science Fiction / Western

ISBN: 9798891320017

Print Length: 232 pages

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Reviewed by Nick Rees Gardner

While Kendall Roberts' Gunslingers focused on Finn and Will, bereft orphans bent on revenge, Janie explores the aftershocks of that same vengeance. The book begins with a showdown in the town of Victory, a final gun battle in which Janie's lover Will is murdered.

Lost to grief and separated from her other former companions-in-retribution (Finn and David McPhail), Janie searches for a way to reconnect with her lost love. Though Janie's journey is far from peaceful, the foes she faces are not as physical or violent as the army of Governor Hogg's Agents she and her friends once gunned down. Now Janie must choose between love and loss in a magical world filled with alternate realities.

With Will dead, Janie finds herself falling in with strange allies to avenge him and, ultimately, bring him back. Thwarted in her attempt to assassinate Governor Hogg, the man who originally called for the murder of Janie and her friends, Hogg grants her access to a room of portals leading to alternate worlds, worlds in which they believe she will find Will alive. However, Hogg's help isn't selfless and Janie must escape from his clutches as the Governor seeks to use Janie to utilize the power of those portals. Teaming up with Bidziil and Klah, two Native American mystics, Janie must dodge Hogg and his Agents and find a passage between her and the living Will's separate dimensions.