Review by Ernest Lilley
This review originally appeared in SFRevu’s June 2003 Issue – It’s available for Kindle for $2.99, which is a steal.
Have you ever read Coyote Cowgirl by Kim Antieau? It’s about food, family, love, betrayal, shamanism and food. Did I mention the food?

Charles de Lint says it’s one of his favorite books, and I like stories about the southwest and that whole spirit in the land stuff so I thought I’d give it a try. But I was determined to take Charles de Lint’s opinion with a grain of salt. I mean, he’s a seriously good writer, but what does he know? What’s really good, it turns out.

The story is about a young woman in the southwest who’s the misfit in a family of cooks. She can’t cook, talks to a crystal skull, and in their opinion, is a few eggs shy of an omelet. Well, the skull did talk to her first, and  like lots of misfits, she gradually starts to understand that she would fit in just fine, if she could just find the right place, and listen to the right voices.

Especially the wisecracking voice of the family’s heirloom skull. The one that fits on top of the ruby encrusted scepter that her father brings out twice a year on festival days. The scepter she was supposed to lock up in the safe (with the skull), not leave out while dallying with cousin Johnny, (“he’s not really a cousin”) who takes the scepter to pay off a gambling debt.

While her parents take off on vacation, Jeanne takes off to track down Johnny, and the skull, which hasn’t talked to her since she was a child, breaks its silence to beg to come along. Bringing along the skull is good for Jeanne, because it’s attuned to the scepter’s vibrations and thus is able to guide her, and it’s good for us because the snappy repartee between the two adds a wry touch to the proceedings and consternation to the onlookers.

Her chase takes her to Vegas and beyond, to a mysterious temple on radioactive land, and off to Mexico where her supposedly dead grandmother is living. But the hunter may be the hunted as well, and people start disappearing mysteriously in her wake. All too soon, it looks like Jeanne is closing in on her goal, much to the reader’s dismay, but the past reveals itself to be mere prologue.

The story winds wonderfully on as she comes to grips with being psychic or crazy (whatever), cooking, love, and her place in the soup of life.

Coyote Cowgirl is a terrific read and one that crosses a number of genre boudaries, not the lease of which being rich fantasy and fine food.

The author doesn’t hide the fact that he’s out to clone O’Brien’s Master and Commander in space, and the story’s strength and weakness lies in how closely he comes, right down to the stilted dialog and naval tradition. Which ironically, makes it both anachronistic and accurate. Oh, and fun.

Lest you think author H. Paul Honsinger is trying to slip one by you, he puts his intent on the board from the start: to take the Jack Aubrey character created by Patrick O’Brian from the deep blue to the deep black and create a series showing the master and commander as he might be in a future time and war. He’s not the first to channel heroes from the age of sail into the age of starships. Among others, Gene Roddenberry based James Tiberius Kirk in no small part on C. S. Forester’s naval hero, as did David Weber in Honor Harrington, who shares the character and initials if not the exact chromosomes.  It’s only fair that they should inspire others, as they both almost certainly were inspired by Edward Pellew, a captain in Nelson’s navy who eventually rose to admiral, brilliant at sea, but driven by the poverty of his childhood to occasional lapses of judgement ashore. Continue reading →