Gunslinger Girl by Lyndsay Ely Review

Gunslinger Girl by Lyndsay Ely is one of the most unique books I have ever read. The genre is difficult to pin down - it's set in the future, which points to dystopian, but is clearly influenced by many 'Wild West' themes, such as 'the civilization out east' or the most important object(s) in the novel - Serendipity's guns. Besides the interesting premise, there are some good and not-so-good parts of the story that I'll get into later. Overall, I'd rate this book a 'blah' 6.5/10.

One of the best parts of the novel was the worldbuilding. Ely does a great job introducing elements of the story one at a time without inundating us with a ton of information. Most of the important elements, such as the dissidents vs. corporations/the government conflict, wasn't fully revealed until the end of the story. However, we learn what dissidents are fairly quickly - we're given enough background on them to feel as though we understand the story. As Serendipity settles more into Cessation, the city where most of the story takes place, more of the power players and background characters are developed. We learn more about Selene, Patrick Sheridan, and Drakos-Pryce. (I'll talk about the characters soon.) The way they are written into the setting and the complex situation gives the reader a sense of reality.

The other good thing about this book was the multitude of characters. One of the best things an author can do, in my opinion, is give us complex characters that are hard to define as antagonist or protagonist. It keeps the reader guessing and (ideally) provides plenty of turns and suspense in a story. One of my favorite characters was Luster. She's technically a background character, but she's still one of Serendipity's best friends. She seems like a person you could identify 'home' with. Other important characters - like Selene - weren't developed as much as I would like. I know for sure Selene is a benefactress, who controls Cessation, but her entire personality seems to be defined as 'cold' or 'distant'. I wish we had seen another side of her.

As for Serendipity, I admire her sense of integrity. She doesn't do something unless it matches her rigorous sense of morals. She is very loyal to those she loves and cares deeply for them. One of the disappointing elements of her character was how cowardly she seemed sometimes. She spent a lot of time 'gritting her teeth' and talking herself up, but she didn't actually show a lot of bravery and seemed to freeze at the worst possible moments. I understand there's a need for character development, but she had plenty of other flaws, and the bravery she was supposed to portray seemed to contradict itself with her cowardice.

Unfortunately, there were some not-so-good elements of Gunslinger Girl. I really, really wish we had been able to see more of the performances in the Theatre. There seemed to be a lot of buildup to Serendipity's first and second show, but there wasn't much detail. It seemed to be a paragraph or two describing what actually happened while onstage, with a disappointing lack of detail and not much shock value. Additionally, the'twist' at the end wasn't expected, but once there was a page or so to absorb it, it was underwhelming, like 'huh, I guess that makes sense'. The overall ending itself wasn't super suspenseful or scary. To sum up, the ending wasn't bad, but there was a lot of wasted potential.

Gunslinger Girl is an interesting YA book with Wild West elements - if you're drawn to that sort of thing, you should definitely read it. Maybe you'll like it more than I did. However, if you don't want to waste your time, don't. There are much better books in the YA genre.