The land will blind you if you’re ungrateful for your breaths.

That’s a hell of an opening for this niche little collection of poems and stories. Exploring women and gender-non conforming written westerns is something I’ve wanted to do for a while now and this was an excellent starter.

As a reader, I appreciate the care that was taken to allow each different culture and aspect their time to shine. The author’s notes also give some necessary background information which is helpful. I do wish there were more supernatural elements in each story, but I do enjoy the variety.

For me, the highlights were the first poem, Clementine, How to Kill a Yoaguai and Calico Sue. I adored these. I could read a whole novel about Calico Sue and her descent into madness in the plains.

Thank you to Brigids Gate Press and NetGalley for access to this e-arc. All opinions are my own and voluntarily given.

Westerns have always been part of a genre I know matters deeply to other people but have always been a struggle for me. It's difficult to root for settlers over indigenous people, and the representation of who's stories are valuable is significantly skewed to stoic white men. Women of the Weird West offers a delightful reprieve from those problems and an invitation to explore different worlds within the Weird West genre. It serves as a solid introduction to the genre or a tasting menu if you're already a fan.

The overall quality of the stories are good and fairly consitent, and nothing stands out as a rough read. The addition of poetry in between the prose is a classic choice in a genre anthology that I do always enjoy. There are, perhaps, a surprisingly large number of stories that focus around fae or Celtic mythologies in general, and you are plopped in the middle of some universes with a limited introduction. Both of those are a matter of taste over quality, which was pretty consistently good.

A few highlights:

"My Darling Clementine" is an excellent haunting start, and is followed by a great monster story with "How to Kill A Yaoguai." "The Legend of Granny Needlesong" feels like a western fairy tale and highlights an elderly female protagonist. "Fela'Fela's War" stretches the genre in some of the most interesting ways and won me over the second I knew there was a ride-able ostrich that was an absolute terror. "Self-Preservation" is a excellent little vampire story. "Valley of the Shadow" is the last story in the collection, and is a subtle unfurling story of details inspired by a real life history. It offers a very necessary perspective to the collection.

Thanks to Netgalley and Brigids Gate Press for the ARC of this book.