Outlaw Planet

This bold standalone from Carey (Once Was Willem) relays the hair-raising exploits of four-footed, foul-mouthed outlaw Dog-Bitch Bess and her extraordinary sentient weapon, Wakeful Slim. Set in the wild frontiers of the States’ Union around the year 3000, when canine-human hybrids are the norm, the novel opens with Bess’s outlaw origin story. Her disdain for her privileged northern existence as the daughter of an industrialist prompts her to respond to a notice seeking a schoolmistress in distant small-town Ottomankie. On a wagon train there, Bess witnesses a stickup that ends with the murder of an innocent passenger. Spurred by this injustice, she takes up manhunting in addition to teaching and wins talking pistol Slim, a “smart gun” from a different part of the multiverse, as a prize in a gunfight. After Bess’s lover, Martha, is killed by a raiding party, Bess and Slim set out on a deeply personal revenge mission. Carey hints at the injustices in his imagined society (there are “exactly seventeen” enslaved squirrels in Ottomankie) but mostly avoids thorny topics to make an entertaining study of weird western tropes. The sci-fi elements eventually ramp up, revealing a multiverse caught in a never-ending cycle of war. Told in a twangy voice and studded with wild worldbuilding details, this cinematic saga has nary a dull moment. (Nov.)