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"Weird but fun fantasy"

Marzipan "Marzi" McCarty is the night manager at the coffeehouse Genius Loci, the place where famous artist Garmond Ray painted seven murals in seven different rooms before vanishing without a trace. Marzi thinks of her work at the coffeehouse as a job but her vocation is writing the comic strip Rangergirl, a heroine fighting Evil in the contemporary west.

Strange things start happening in and around the coffeehouse. A regular customer wants to free the earthquake god trapped in Genius Loci. Jane, another patron, wants to free the imprisoned "dark goddess of the earth goddess. Jane is killed and her doppelganger, made of mud with extraordinary powers tries to kill Marzi. Jonathan who has come to study the muralist's work wants to see the Desert Room which Marzi has closed off. She has repressed memories of the Evil that is behind the closed door holding the mural and she has become the guardian charged with keeping the evil which manifests himself as the Outlaw, the evil sorcerer in her comic strip, from busting free and destroying Santa Crux and then the rest of California and maybe the world. The malevolent being who has opened his prison a millimeter has influenced people to try to free him but he hasn't factored in Marzi and her friends who try to stop him.

The setting in the real world is the modern day west but evil lives in a realm where the old west is given form in another plane but occupying identical space as Santa Cruz where the book takes place. This is a fantastic classic good vs. evil confrontation where both sides have powers in the final battle that will decide what happens to the rest of the planet. Dealing with the evil one has forced the heroine to repress those memories and only lets them out through her comic book. The spunky heroine will need everything she has and more to triumph against overwhelming odds.

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted November 10, 2005

Reviewed by PNR Group Member
Posted January 25, 2007

In this debut novel, acclaimed short-story author Tim Pratt delivers an exciting heroine with a hidden talent – and a secret duty. Witty and suspenseful, here is a contemporary love song to the West that was won and the myths that shape us….

As night manager of Santa Cruz’s quirkiest coffeehouse, Marzi McCarty makes a mean espresso, but her first love is making comics. Her claim to fame: The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl, a cowpunk neo-western yarn. Striding through an urban frontier peopled by Marzi’s wild imagination, Rangergirl doles out her own brand of justice. But lately Marzi’s imagination seems to be altering her reality. She’s seeing the world through Rangergirl’s eyes – literally – complete with her deadly nemesis, the Outlaw.

It all started when Marzi opened a hidden door in the coffeehouse storage room. There, hidden behind the world she knows, she saw the face of something strange… and dangerous. And she unwittingly became its guard. But some primal darkness must have escaped, because Marzi hasn’t been the same since. And neither have her customers, who are acting downright apocalyptic.

Now it’s up to Marzi to stop this supervillainous force that’s swaggered its way into her world. For Marzi, it’s the showdown of her life. For Rangergirl, it’s just another day....

Read an Excerpt