A fun read overall, I breezed through it.

And I say that as a Western purist, mind you. I’ve said in previous reviews that I’m don’t like fantasy in Westerns. I want my bullets to be real, I want my corn-fed cowboys, I want my wisecracking Native Americans, I want my busty saloon girls, and I want the sheriff gunning down the outlaws at a shootout, all right? I don’t want no stinkin’ foreign mythological critters mixed in.

The Western is so idiosyncratically American you could call it the national mythology of the US, their epic poem in modern version. If Rome has The Aeneid and Greece The Iliad & The Odyssey, the United States has the Western. I’ve always seen it that way, probably because amongst my first books were many Westerns (my dad loved the genre), and the first things I learnt about America back when I was too little to point it on a map were from a Western. I’m of course speaking of the myth-making every growing nation engages in to shape its new independent identity, not the actual reality.

And in that mythology, the fairy tales and legends from Europe kind of feel out of place. If there has to be magic in Westerns, it should be Native American magic, I argued. Throw in the magical critters of the land, there’s plenty of them, I argued. Oh, but the people who made the Westerns were majority European, so what if their magical critters came to America with the people too, Katie argued.

Points for Katie, it was an intriguing idea.

What, indeed, if the magical and legendary creatures of Europe came to America with the pioneers and immigrants? I would’ve muttered “kudzu” and wiggled my eyebrows at it. Yes, the invading magical critters would be in collision course with the native magical critters, that was my expectation.

So far, it hasn’t happened in this series, much to my chagrin. There hasn’t been such a clash yet. But not for lack of trying, because if that bastard Sigurd had his way, European (and as of this book, Asian) magical critters would kudzu their way into US domination. I say “if” because in Sigurd’s way stand the Calhouns and the worst cowboy apprentice that side of the pond, Jack Landry, and a Chinese vigilante cosplaying as a creative mix of Mulan and Zorro.

One of the darkest aspects of the expansion towards the left coast that Westerns don’t touch on is the human trafficking of Asian women and girls for prostitution. The bad guys in Westerns are cattle rustlers, bank robbers, card sharpers, greedy land-grabbers, slaveowners, and so on. The “cool” crimes, maybe a murder or two if you want your villain to be exceptionally bad. But in the real West, human trafficking, sexual slavery, indenture, and exploitation of Asian, Irish, and Native American women is one crime too “uncool” to be featured in the mythology. Sure, if you’re smart you can guess the busty saloon girls are whores and infer there’s a brothel upstairs or next door, but that’s likely all you’ll see. But would you know it, the busty saloon girl might very well be a slave a gang trafficked from her country to serve as a prostitute? In that case, it’s not just your hero having some fun with a pretty face with loose morals; it’s your hero raping a girl and the mythology obfuscating it. Wyatt Earp shoots the horse thieves, not the Tong thug selling prepubescent girls to the town’s paedos. Achilles fights his fellow king for his prerogatives over a war trophy, not the right of Briseis to not have anyone forced on her.

Black Dragon is by no means a serious exploration of this atrocious practice, it’s a breezy adventure story. But it does show this reality. Shufen, the heroine, is motivated to fight by the trauma endured from human trafficking touching her family. It’s escapism and easily solved, indeed, but I don’t expect adventure stories to go in-depth. It’s all in the framing. It’s easy enough to write sanitised Westerns that don’t touch on (or barely hint at) the uglier realities as much as it’s easy to go all Cormac McCarthy and write only the uglier realities. It takes more crafting to write a Western that has all the trademarks of the funnier, “clean” ones whilst managing to touch on the bad aspects.

The same happens with Landry’s PTSD with fire. It’s hilarious that he, of all people, has to deal with a firebreathing dragon. Kind of reminds me of the irony of ASOIAF’s Sandor Clegane having to fight surrounded by fire despite his PTSD from fire. But despite the hilarity, Landry’s trauma isn’t downplayed. I think that was what made this work for me despite being a Fantasy Western: Katie doesn’t pretend to do a psychological study on trauma, and doesn’t pretend to write a social critique of past societal evils; she simply puts them in as part of the story with no other pretensions than show that these things did happen and don’t have to be obfuscated to preserve the myth. They can work in the mythology, if you know how to frame it. Have Wyatt Earp—or, in this case, Wynona Earp—kill the traffickers of young girls. Simple!

My one critique would be that the final chapter doesn’t reflect the passage of time it claims to. It’s been years since the last scene, but the epilogue reads like it was next day or two. The story of this book is fast-paced, too fast paced in some parts, so for the closing chapter to say it’s been so long since doesn’t make sense. What has happened within those years since Shufen’s last stand with the Tong and her with Landy at the Calhoun ranch? What has the dragon been doing all these years? Why does Jinjing feel like she’s not grown at all either physically or mentally? I’m aware that my copy was a rough ARC, so I’m hoping this timeline has been fixed, because it’s grating to have such a huge time jump that shows us the characters being exactly the same as the day before. I would also recommend the all-caps and the shouting/exclamations in dialogue are toned down, because after a while it starts to feel like some characters can’t talk without shouting or exclaiming (or is that on purpose? Because Landry is the most conspicuous offender here).

A third thing I’d point out is that I didn’t get why this dragon can breathe fire. Is he a Western dragon in truth? Because he came from China and Chinese dragons don’t breathe fire, that’s for the European dragons. Or is he a Chinese dragon who is now spewing fire because he’s had a jalapeño too many? I would very much like to see an explanation for this particularity. if it’s a creative liberty, I have no objections, though it does feel odd to me.

Oh, and it’s a miracle I didn’t miss Sigurd at all. I didn’t think I’d like this story without him, because I’m not especially engrossed by the Calhouns’ story, and Landry hasn’t captured my heart so far either. But Shufen? Yes! Katie said Shufen was vaguely inspired by Mulan, and I could easily see which parts, emphasis on “vaguely.” She made the book enjoyable like I didn’t believe possible. A Sigurd vs Shufen clash would make my day, now that she’s got on his hit list and he has reason to want her head.