deepwinterodd 's review for:

Uncanny Magazine, Issue 10, May/June 2016 by Seanan McGuire, Michael Damian Thomas, Lynne M. Thomas, Lynne M. Thomas

4.0

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You’d torn your hands to pieces, ripped the skin and flesh down to the bone, and the desert had built you back out of sand and briars, then pushed you rudely away from the entrance to the collapsed mineshaft. The wandering skeletons of slain cattle and men had stopped their nighttime shambling to watch through ant–eaten eyes. Stay away from this, child.

An incredibly tense short story. Hoo, I just held my breath for twenty minutes and can feel it.

Immaculate world-building. Characters drawn large with tiny details in the sentences, and the type of Western I really like: one that focuses on the ghost towns and the blood and death and raw fight against the desert that was necessary to build and lose fortunes. Ones where people don't pretend there's going to be a happy ending.

And this ending, while both happy and unhappy, felt delightfully appropriate.