Gunslinger Girl by Lyndsay Ely (review)

Serendipity is six months shy of the age of majority when her loveless father bargains her away to another commune, since as a fertile young woman she's prized in this post-apocalyptic world. Having none of that, Pity, as she's known, sneaks away with her mother's pistols and her best friend, Finn, heading east toward Columbia, capital of the Confederacy of North America. After Finn is killed by thieves, Pity is rescued and brought to Cessation, a lawless city in the west where citizens are free of the restrictive farming communes and visitors enjoy the hedonism of Casimir, a Las Vegas–style hub with every vice money can buy, and entertainment nonpareil at Halcyon Singh's Theatre Vespertine. Pity's sharpshooter skills earn her a solo act, some friends, and a place to call home, but certainly not the peace and freedom she ran away for. Dirty politics has its grip in this Western-like dystopia, and Pity's guns are called into service to protect Cessation, her new boyfriend, Max, and the people who have given her shelter—if, that is, she can actually shoot for the kill in a clinch and figure out who's the devil here and who's on the side of the tarnished angels. Sex, drugs, and violence infuse Pity's new milieu, but since assault weapons don't seem to have survived CONA's historical cataclysms, pistol and rifle shootouts are relatively genteel affairs, and those with the sharpest eyes and the sense to keep count of their bullets get to live another day. Ely constructs a laudably realized world and leaves the door ajar for Pity's return—and it would be a dang shame if she has ridden permanently off into the sunset. EB