Hello, everyone! March and April are full of exciting book releases, and today, I'm helping to celebrate the first of these: Katie Hanna's Water Horse, a Western fantasy coming in just a few days, on March 19. Katie has published many short stories in anthologies and through Havok, but this is her first full-length nove release, so I'm absolutely thrilled for her. I was also thrilled to get my hands on an ARC of her novel so I could read this tale of magic, murder, and marriage as soon as possible — and, of course, so I could share my thoughts with y'all.

Thoughts on Water Horse

1. I love the blend of a Western setting and Irish mythology. You all know that I'm a fan of unique fantasy settings, especially for historical fantasy — while I love the classic medieval-Western-European-inspired stories, it's delightful to see how authors merge magic and fantasy elements with other eras. And since the Old West is already such a legendary era and region on its own, combining it with fantasy seems such like such a natural choice, I'm always surprised that there aren't more fantasy Westerns out there. Happily, Water Horse fills a little bit of that void. I can't speak to the book's historical accuracy, but it hits the right notes of ranchers and cowboys, wild horses, isolated settlements, and adventure. And Hanna blends in Irish mythology, specifically the water horses (similar to kelpies, but sea-dwelling), along with other magic and magical beings in a way that works very well.
   
2. I enjoyed the characters and their dynamics. This book features a very colorful and varied cast of characters, both magical and mundane. I enjoyed the characters themselves, and I also enjoyed the dynamics between them: the wary alliances, the friendships, and, yes, the romance — Meg and George end up in a marriage of convenience turned second-chance romance (for one of them, anyway), and it's very sweet. That said, the friendships — between George and his ranch hands, between Meg and the magical beings with whom she can communicate, and between Meg and Brian (a ranch hand who's also from Ireland) — are also a strong element of the story, and they were all written very well. Plus, there's a magical cat in this story, so that's obviously a plus.
3. There is a lot more swearing than I expected. Is it worse than Critical Role (aka, the very upper limit of what I can tolerate)? No. Is it worse than some other books I've read? Also no. Was it enough to detract from my enjoyment of the book? Yes, yes it was — language used included pretty much everything except the f-bomb, and the s-word showed up with surprising frequency. And, yes, I know, this is a story about cowboys, and realistically speaking, they probably wouldn't exactly be clean-spoken . . . but I think that it should be possible to strike a balance between realism and not making readers uncomfortable in that way. If a book is going to make me uncomfortable, I would prefer it to be because it challenges my view of the world in a good way, not because the characters have overly dirty mouths.
4. On a nitpicky note, there's something about either the writing style or the POV that I don't love. I think this has to do with the fact that Water Horse is written in first-person POV that switches between three characters, and while I love single-lead first-person POV, switching first-person POV has to be done really, really well in order to not bother me. Technically, Water Horse checks the main boxes — the characters have fairly distinct voices, they don't switch mid-chapter, and chapters are labeled with the POV character — but something about it still bothers me, and it kept me from enjoying the book as much as I could. This is very much a personal thing, though, so others might not be bothered at all.
5. This is, in many ways, a story about secrets and second chances. The events of this story are a second chance for many characters, whether that's a second chance at life, at love, or at being better than you used to be. It's also about secrets, how they divide characters and how they threaten the second chances that are on offer. And while I did occasionally get frustrated with how long some of those secrets were kept, the way in which they came out and the results of the reveals played well with the overall theme.

Does Water Horse sound like something you'd enjoy reading? What's a setting you'd like to see more in fantasy? Tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!