Book Review: Gunslinger Girl by Lyndsay Ely
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Summary
“James Patterson presents a bold new heroine—a cross between Katniss Everdeen and Annie Oakley: Serendipity Jones, the fastest sharpshooter in tomorrow’s West.
Seventeen-year-old Serendipity “Pity” Jones inherited two things from her mother: a pair of six shooters and perfect aim. She’s been offered a life of fame and fortune in Cessation, a glittering city where lawlessness is a way of life. But the price she pays for her freedom may be too great….
In this extraordinary debut from Lyndsay Ely, the West is once again wild after a Second Civil War fractures the U.S. into a broken, dangerous land. Pity’s struggle against the dark and twisted underbelly of a corrupt city will haunt you long after the final bullet is shot.”
-From BN.com
Review
This book was absolutely fantastic and not what I thought it was going to be like at all.
Absolutely gorgeous cover!
First off, just look at that cover! It’s so beautiful! What caught me were the colors and the combination chosen (photo above slightly muted as color corrected for Instagram) but that’s what initially drew me in. Then the female on the cover. Clearly there was going to be a badass lead and I just had to pick it up then. I don’t think I read the summary before I borrowed the book, and even before I read it, I only skimmed it. So honestly I didn’t really know what the book was about going into it. Just that it was about a girl and she had some guns.
Strong female lead.
As I said before, it clearly had a strong female lead and boy did it ever! Pity was such a fantastic character. She was realistic, in that she didn’t do something that was ‘superhero’ like like some characters do. She was completely human, just with the ability of being a good shot, and even then she wasn’t always perfect. That was one thing I really liked. She was strong, but wasn’t perfect! I like when you have flaws in your main character as it just makes them so much more relate-able. She felt things, she got injured like everyone else, she got confused and fell in love.
She developed through the book as well, which was fantastic. Sometimes you come across stagnant characters who just kind of have a personality and don’t grow or shift through the book. Sometimes that is okay, but when they develop with the story and as they interact with others, the story line is just so much better. So seeing her develop was definitely a highlight.
Fast paced ending but didn’t see it coming.
The ending of the book moved fast, like the final action sequence. But it didn’t move too fast that it was like ‘here is the book and oh, quickly, here’s the closing’ like some books do. The build up to the end was slow and I really didn’t know where the book was actually going at some points, but not in a bad way. I was just so caught up in the life of Pity and what was happening within the world she was in, it didn’t really bother me that I wasn’t sure where the story was eventually going because it kept me invested in her and seeing what happened. Then the ending came and you were like ‘ohhhh!’
Ambiguous time period.
I was a little unclear as to the time period of the book. I know that it happens some time in the future but I was just kind of unclear as to what kind of world I was looking at. I got this kind of Mad Max/The Gunslinger vibe from the entire book and I was able to visualize everything on my own, but if you struggle coming up with visualizations of worlds and such, it might have been a little challenging. It was after a New Civil War and the world had been supposedly destroyed with kind of a New World Order going on and such, but I sometimes had a feeling it could be a modern day kind of thing just based in the middle of nowhere. It’s not a complaint about the book, as it didn’t detract from my reading experience, but just something I noticed.
Highly recommend!
Overall I really did enjoy this book. If I had the money I would buy it and will add it to my list, but borrowing it will have to suffice for now. However if you want this book, get it from either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. It definitely is a book you might want to re-read because there was just so much and you could re-read it and find something new in the story. I loved the strong characters and the story line kept the pages turning. I mean I read it in one sitting in 3 hours.
Happy Reading!
