A Book of Tongues

A Book of Tongues is the first installment of Gemma Files's Hexslinger series. It's a Weird West tale that follows a band of outlaws headed up by a disgraced preacher turned cowboy wizard and his sassy gunslinger whoreson boyfriend. They're being spied on by a Pinkerton trying to collect scientific data on wizards.

I'm a sucker for the Weird West, and I love a narrative with villain protagonists, so I thought this would be totally up my alley. I think I liked this book(question mark). It was compelling and I will likely pick up the next installment to find out what happens. However, I think there might have just been too much going on. Also, I listened to it as an audio book and I think that made it a little harder to follow than just reading it on the page might have been.

An incomplete list of things featured in A Book of Tongues:

• outlaws
• The Civil War
• wizards
• oodles of gay sex
• violence
• Pinkertons
• Aztec gods
• San Fransisco Chinese brothels
• WIZARD BATTLE
• Native American shamans
• WIZARD PREACHER BATTLE now featuring SCRIPTURE

It was maybe just one too many concepts thrown in. I'm still sussing out exactly how I feel. I would gladly spend one more book in this world to figure out what happens next, but this is the first of a trilogy and for some reason that fills me with a little dread.

Heads up that characters in this book use racial epithets and hold attitudes that are appropriate to the postbellum West. It's incredibly uncomfortable, but the horrors of Manifest Destiny and the white settlement of the American West are examined and commented upon within the narrative.