Pre Pub Book Buzz -- The Half-Made World by Felix Gilman

Oh, I love steampunk. Even better, I've got a steampunk dystopian westerns on my bedside table for review this week. Sweet!

I love the idea of weird westerns, a sub genre that I think hasn't been played up enough lately, but surely goes hand in hand with the new steampunk trend. King's Dark Tower series can sort of be considered weird western. The failed Jonah Hex was definitely one. Technically, Firefly was also weird western.

So what is weird western you ask? Well, Wikipedia describes it as western plus any other genre. Yep. That's it. It goes on to say usually fantasy or horror, which is great in my book. So Felix Gilman's The Half-Made World, due out October 12, definitely fits the bill according to the tag line that came in my promo a few weeks ago: steampunk western dystopian for fall.

Here's a little bit more about the book:

The world is only half-made. What exists has been carved out amidst a war between two rival factions: the Line, paving the world with industry and claiming its residents as slaves; and the Gun, a cult of terror and violence that cripples the population with fear. The only hope at stopping them has seemingly disappeared--the Red Republic once battled the Gun and the Line, and almost won. Now they're just a myth, a bedtime story parents tell their children, of hope.

To the west lies a vast, unchartered world, inhabited only by the legends of the Hill People, immortal and powerful, who live at one with the earth and its elements. Liv Alverhyusen, a doctor of the new science of psychology, travels to edge of the made world to a spiritually protected mental institution to study the minds of those broken by the Gun and the Line. In its rooms lies an old general of the Red Republic, the one man whose shattered mind just may hold the secret to stopping the Gun and the Line. And either side will do anything to understand how.

My copy literally just arrived so I've not had a chance to dive in yet, but I'm really chomping at the bit to get to it.