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Shotgun Sorceress (Jessie Shimmer) Mass Market Paperback – October 26, 2010
Lucy A. Snyder (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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For Jessie Shimmer, everything changed when she went to hell and back to save her lover, Cooper Marron. After tangling with supernatural forces and killing an untouchable spirit lord, Jessie finds herself gifted—or perhaps cursed—with dark powers. And when she and Cooper make love, her pleasure throes light the whole house on fire. What is a sorceress to do?
Jessie is about to find out. The circumstances of her birth, the mystery of a father she never knew, and the help of a cuddly ferret turned fearsome monster have made Jessie not just an outlaw from mundane society, but an accidental revolutionary in the magic realm. Encountering portals stitched into thin air and a fiercely sexy soul harvester, Jessie rushes headlong among enemies, horrors, wonders, and lovers into a place of self-discovery—or destruction.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherDel Rey
- Publication dateOctober 26, 2010
- Dimensions4.17 x 0.91 x 6.88 inches
- ISBN-100345512103
- ISBN-13978-0345512109
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“[A] thrilling trial-by-fire debut . . . constantly surprising.”—Christopher Golden, author of The Lost Ones
“An exhilarating ride of magic and mayhem.”—Sèphera Girón, author of Mistress of the Dark
“Gripping . . . marks the debut of a real talent . . . I couldn’t put it down!”—Sarah Langan, author of Audrey’s Door
“With a cast of unforgettable characters and relentless action and suspense, Lucy A. Snyder masterfully weaves a fantastical plot into a real-world setting, never once breaking stride.”—Deborah LeBlanc, author of Water Witch
“Wildly imaginative and intensely gripping.”—Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
one
A Kick in the Head
The festering mob of meat puppets in their tattered Sunday best shambled aside as I rode Pal down Main Street toward the stark white columns and broad marble steps of the Saguaro Hotel. There had to be a thousand bodies in the stinking brown sea parting before us. My skull was pounding, the July heat and hard West Texas sun nearly unbearable. I tipped my straw cowboy hat forward in a futile attempt to get some of the weak breeze on the back of my head.
And in a blink, Miko was suddenly there on the steps, Cooper and the Warlock strung up naked and sunburned on rough-hewn mesquite crosses to either side of her. As a small mercy, their limbs had been tied, not nailed, to the twisted branches. Their heads hung forward, insensible, as their chests shuddered to pull in shallow breaths.
The devil kitten in my saddlebag was purring loudly. It could sense the impending carnage.
You ready for this? I asked Pal.
“Ready for a slow, bloody, excruciating death followed by eternal damnation? Of course. What fun.”
Ignoring his sarcasm, I drew my pistol-grip Mossberg shotgun and racked a cartridge into the chamber.
“Give ’em back, Miko!” My voice was tight, shaky, a mouse’s outraged squeak at a lion.
She smiled at me, and all at once her beauty and power hit me like a velvet sledgehammer. If I’d been standing I would have fallen to my knees. I hoped I wasn’t getting wet; Pal would know and it would be a sprinkle of embarrassment on top of the disaster sundae I’d brought to our table.
“You know what I want,” she whispered, her voice floating easily over the distance between us. “Give yourself to me, and your men shall go free.”
A tiny part of me—the part that was exhausted, weary of fighting, weary of running—wondered if giving my body and soul to her would really be such a bad thing.
Oh, fuck that noise, the rest of me replied. Fuck that long and hard.
But wait.
I’m getting ahead of myself … as usual.
I should have known my life would keep going merrily to shit. The previous Friday had been busier than a dam full of beavers on crystal meth. I’d run police roadblocks, battled dragons, and literally gone to hell and back as I rescued my boyfriend, Cooper, and his little brothers from a fate considerably worse than death. Every muscle in my body ached, and I was looking forward to getting some rest, if perhaps not much actual sleep. I’d seen some things that evening that would probably give me insomnia for, oh, the next decade or so. And there was the little detail that I’d put our city’s head wizard into a coma and killed a major guardian spirit. They both richly deserved it, but I’d broken about infinity-plus-one laws and surely the authorities were going to hunt me down with extreme prejudice. So I had prison and perhaps execution to look forward to as well. Yay, go me.
But, so far, it appeared I was safe for the night. I was definitely looking forward to the late dinner my witch friend Mother Karen was making for me and the other Talents who’d helped in the rescue. Whatever she had cooking in her kitchen smelled wonderful. And I knew my familiar, Pal, was plenty hungry.
I carried a platter of savory, steaming ham and a wooden bucket of water down Karen’s back steps out into the moonlit yard. It probably looked the same as most other backyards in the neighborhood: rattan furniture and a shiny steel gas barbecue on the brick patio, a wooden picnic table on the lawn, a scattering of oak and buckeye trees bordering the tall dog-eared plank fence ringed by softly glowing solar-charged lights. However, I suspected this was the only place in the entire state of Ohio sheltering a shaggy, six-foot-tall spider monster.
Who, based on the circles his clawed legs had torn in the turf, had spent the past half hour stalking his own posterior.
“Hey, Pal, I got your dinner,” I called.
He stopped going around in circles and blinked his four eyes at me, licking his whiskered muzzle uncertainly.
At least, I thought Palimpsest looked uncertain; as a ferret his emotions had been pretty easy to read. But now that his familiar form had become magically blended with his true arachnoid body … well, I didn’t exactly know what “happy” or “sad” or “puzzled” was supposed to look like on such an alien face.
“Having troubles over there?” I asked, setting the platter and bucket down on the picnic table.
“I … have an itch,” he replied gravely, his voice strange and muffled in my mind. Our telepathic connection was slowly improving, but that, too, was taking some getting used to.
“I could reach every part of my Quamo body and my ferret body,” Pal continued, “but oddly these new rear legs aren’t very flexible. I can reach my underside, but not my back.”
“Maybe you just need to do some yoga.”
Through the valved spiracles on his abdomen, he blew noisy chords that sounded like a child randomly banging on the keys of an organ. Laughter? Oh-please snorts? I’d only known Pal for a week, and already I had to get to know him all over again.
“That doesn’t help me at the moment,” he said.
“Horses back into trees and fence posts to scratch themselves,” I replied. “You’re tall enough to stand on tippytoes and scratch yourself on the low limbs of that oak over there.”
“How dreadfully undignified.”
“Or you could just roll around on the grass.”
“And that’s more dignified how?”
“Oh, hush. It’s not like anybody can see you back here,” I pointed out. “Otherwise you’d have flipped out the neighbors already and the cops would probably be here.”
Long ago, Mother Karen had put her house and its yards under a camouflage charm to keep her foster children’s magical practice sessions out of sight of the neighbors. So at least there would be no panicked suburbanites dialing 911 to report a monster prowling through Worthington.
I glanced up at the sky, half expecting to see a Virtus silently descending, ready to smite me like a curse from Heaven. One of the huge guardian spirits had already tried to do a little smiting earlier that evening. Mr. Jordan, the aforementioned now-comatose head of the local Governing Circle, had convinced the Virtus that I was committing some kind of grand necromancy instead of simply trying to rescue Cooper. I’d defended myself, not expecting to win the battle, but win I did.
It was still hard to believe: I had killed a Virtus. Nobody was supposed to be able to do that. Not with magic or luck or nuclear weapons or anything. It was as if I’d thrown myself naked in front of a speeding freight train in a desperate, stupid attempt to halt hundreds of hurtling tons of iron … and had somehow stopped it cold.
Miracles had abounded that evening. But I doubted the Virtus Regnum would see me as anything but a threat. They’d be coming for me, and from what I’d seen so far, they were as merciful as black holes.
I squinted up at the dark spaces between the stars, wondering what lurked there.
“Speaking of things that shouldn’t be seen by mundanes, how is that working for you?” Pal asked.
“Huh?” I looked at him, confused.
He nodded toward the gray satin opera glove on my left arm. “The gauntlet. Is it keeping your flames contained?”
“Yes, Karen and the Warlock did a good job enchanting this,” I replied, looking at the thin curls of smoke that were trailing from the cuff of the glove, as if I’d used it as a place to stash a still-smoldering cigarette. So far, that was the only sign that the lower half of my arm was a torch of hellfire, courtesy of my having to plunge my arm into the burning heart of the Goad, the pain-devouring devil that had imprisoned Cooper and his family.
“It slips down a little sometimes—I might have to find some double-sided tape or superglue to hold it in place.”
Sheathed in the glove, my arm functioned more or less normally, but still had a squishy unreliability. Fine finger movements were still difficult. And that wasn’t surprising, considering that my hand was boneless, fleshless, nothing but diabolic flame. I’d had to rely on a natural talent for spiritual extension to give it any kind of solidity; Pal had referred to the ability as “reflexive parakinesis.”
And it was pretty close to true reflex. My crysoberyl ocularis—a replacement for my left eye, which I’d lost the week before in a battle with a demon—still hurt a bit, and I was constantly aware that I had a piece of polished rock stuck in my head. But a couple of times that evening, I had completely forgotten that my left arm was no longer entirely flesh. And fortunately I hadn’t dropped anything important as a consequence.
“With luck we may be able to find someone to remove the underlying curse, and you’ll have your regular arm back,” Pal said.
I frowned. Everyone was treating my flame hand—and its power—like a curse. If I were an evil person, somebody bent on destruction and domination, my hand would have seemed almost purely a gift from the gods. With that kind of power literally at my fingertips, so what if having a fiery hand presented a few practical problems? That would be like complaining that you had to move a few boxes out of your garage to make way for the new Porsche. Or in my case, the new tank with a seemingly unlimited supply of surface-to-air missiles.
I was pretty sure I wasn’t an evil person.
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Product details
- Publisher : Del Rey (October 26, 2010)
- Language : English
- Mass Market Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0345512103
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345512109
- Item Weight : 6.1 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.17 x 0.91 x 6.88 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #2,951,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #15,165 in Action & Adventure Romance (Books)
- #23,856 in Fantasy Action & Adventure
- #35,542 in Fantasy Romance (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Lucy A. Snyder is the five-time Bram Stoker Award-winning and Shirley Jackson Award-nominated author of 14 books:
* Sister, Maiden, Monster
* Halloween Season
* Exposed Nerves
* Garden of Eldritch Delights
* While the Black Stars Burn
* Spellbent
* Shotgun Sorceress
* Switchblade Goddess
* Soft Apocalypses
* Orchid Carousals
* Sparks and Shadows
* Chimeric Machines
* Installing Linux on a Dead Badger
* Shooting Yourself in the Head For Fun and Profit: A Writer's Survival Guide
Her writing has been translated into French, Russian, Italian, Czech, and Japanese editions and has appeared in publications such as Apex Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, Pseudopod, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, Steampunk World, and Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 5.
She has an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and lives in Ohio. You can follow her on Twitter at @LucyASnyder.
You can learn more at her website: www.lucysnyder.com
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The Bad: Plot is a little predictable, takes to many shortcuts, may offend some people
Lucy A. Snyder is at it again with the tales of Pal and Jessie Shimmer, but this time around it gets weirder, more mature, and more raw than Spellbent. The book also has more action, and is paced a little better this time around which is great for longer periods of reading. After beating the Virtii, rescuing Cooper's brothers from his hell, and getting a possessing Goad inside of her she has run into more trouble this time around. The first half of the book takes awhile to get to the good stuff which is everyone getting stuck in a temporary post-apocalyptic Cuchillo, Texas.
Pal, Jessie, and gang find themselves having to meet Jordan in another realm because they killed her brother and they must pay for it. Upon arriving under mutual circumstances they get chased into a portal via another Virtii and are stuck in the post-apocalyptic Texas where an evil goddess named Miko wants a person to give her their souls willingly or she will take them and use them as meat puppets (a fancy way of saying zombies).
Without spoiling too much of the plot they meet some other strange characters, and it turns into a full scale war, but you never get to read about that. I felt Lucy took some shortcuts to make the book shorter, and I would have loved to read more about a battle or two with the meat puppets. The book's main pull comes from it's raw mature theme, and it has more graphic sex, gore, and language than the first book. I was pretty taken aback by some of the stuff in here so people with weak hearts should stay away. The story is more personal with Jessie and you can really see how she's changed and how much crap she can take as a human being.
Shotgun Sorceress really shows how much pain and suffering humans can take, and it still has this surreal edge about it. I love that style of writing, but the book didn't score higher than her last one because she is taking shortcuts again. This series is great for people who want to get right into it, but I like a little back story and a little more detail about what's going on in the world. Lucy is one of the "I don't care what you think" writers and it shows in here books and I wish more people would write more like here. If you read the last one go ahead and read this because it's different (not so much as better) and you'll enjoy it.
Snyder's story here is a great deal darker than her previous one. Already stressed out after the first novel's adventures, Jessie's emotions are on a hair-trigger now, even considering Miko's power to artificially exaggerate the emotions of humans. In fact, all our lead characters are on edge and snappish for most of the novel, with only Pal, Jessie's familiar, on a fairly even keel. Snyder's character work here really knocks things home, with even minor characters given full and fascinating personalities. The mood and settings are great, too -- from the beautiful but dangerous Faery to a cramped, besieged, and paranoid college campus to a makeshift pup tent in the backyard, all the settings make you feel like you're right there watching the action. And there's a ton of action, too -- Jessie may be a spellcaster, but she spends a lot of her time beating people up, shooting zombies, and running to catch up with the bad guys.
If you loved "Spellbent" -- and you better have, or else -- you're going to love "Shotgun Sorceress," too. Go pick it up.
Things are a little unusual there and the group comes to find out that a devil named Miko has taken over the entire town. A lot of the residents are dead while others are Miko's zombie like meat puppets. The town has been completely blocked from any kind of aid.
I loved this book. I might've liked it more than I did the first one, Spellbent. My husband commented on how quickly I read this story. This is due to the books quick pace, entertaining storyline, and colorful cast of characters. I'm not a Cooper fan. He is easily the dullest character; very one dimensional. I keep wanting more for Jessie than what he seems to provide. But I love Warlock, Pal, the babies, and the others. Jessie feels so real. We learn more of her history here and I love that she is painted so realistically, flaws and failings and all.
I only have a couple of negatives. The first third of the book dealt with the consequences of the climax to the first book. Then it abruptly switched to the new plotline. I found the change abrupt and very noticeable. There are some parts of the book where I wondered whether things were really happening or if they were taking place in some kind of alternative existence. I'd like this to be presented more clearly in the future.
This wasn't a perfect book but I enjoyed it enough to forget that fact. I'm going to be waiting not-so-patiently for the next installment, "Switchblade Goddess".
Top reviews from other countries

The majority of the book is chasing down a soul sucking demon who wants to keep her food supply & hell in place, having incarcerated a small town. Our butt kicking protagonist finds out more about her family & history. Her spidery familiar brings entertainment and I loved his calm machinisations & who I think is one of the best characters.
Personally would of liked to have seen Jessies relationship with 'Blue' developed & her problems with the guardian spirits explored, also it annoyingly ends on a cliffhanger theres not really any closure & the ending anticlimatic. Wish I could be more positive as I really enjoyed the debut.

But oh, what a nasty shock. The writing itself is good quality, in terms of the way the author uses language and her descriptive capabilities. But frankly, this book is not even a book. It's a hodgepodge of disjointed scenes, squished side by side and bound together. There is no flow, no cohesion. Basically, this 'collection of scenes' looks like a writer's idea scrapbook, and the entire novel itself feels directionless and in dire need of heavy editing and a complete rewrite.
There are also scenes seemingly pasted between other scenes, where they don't belong and are irrelevant. One especially distracting example is when Jessie launches into a 3 page story about her preteen sexual conquests, out of nowhere, and in great detail. I was left cringing, literally thinking to myself "TMI, Lucy Snyder, TMI!!" Yes, i understand these types of books have sex in them. I am even a fan of actual erotica. But even for me, reading graphic descriptions of tween sex is beyond the pale and totally disgusting.
A lot of the book has random raunchy sexual references, which I can tell are meant to come off as an irreverent part of Jessie's narrating style, but which instead make the reader feel like they're at a school lunch table with a bunch of guffawing, pimply teen boys. The references are not erotic, and not even indicative of adult sexuality. They are just disgusting and adolescent. I won't mention any here because I have no doubt they would get my review taken down.
Halfway through the book, I groaned and just put it away for a few days. I only finished it out of a sense of obligation. I am so let down, because I truly wanted to know what lay in store for Jessie and Cooper. The overall feeling I got from the book is that the author is trying too hard. It's almost like she wants to be Diablo Cody (the screenwriter who did "Juno"), attempting to be ultramodern and witty. But she doesn't pull it off.
I have to stongly advise against purchasing this book. I am not sure if I will bother with the next book when it comes out... I certainly couldn't stomach re-reading this installment to refresh my memory when the time comes. A sad end to my journey with Jessie and Cooper.