This book is perfect for any adventure display at the library. It was a fun engaging read all the way through. It was one of those books that I was recommending from the moment I finished reading it.

Thanks to Netgalley and Macmillan for a free copy in exchange for a review!

4.5 stars.

I started reading this thinking it'd be a good adventure for whiling the afternoon... and quickly found I could not put it down. Legends of the Lost Causes combines great Western action with some fabulously creepy fantastical elements. I've seen the book compared to Walking Dead, but it actually reminded me more of Garth Nix's Abhorsen series. The story took plenty of interesting twists and turns, and it definitely didn't pull any punches. I'd highly recommend to readers who crave adventure, have an interest in survival skills, and have the stomach for some grisly moments.

I'd call it: Knife of Never Letting Go meets the Old West, with touches of Abhorsen thrown in the mix.

Feels Like an Honest to Gosh Western

Sure, this book has action, zombie bad guys, a magical macguffin, an implacable villain, and a fantasy quest vibe. It's all good and it all works. Sure, we have a scrappy mixed gang of resourceful, nicely developed, hard charging kid adventurers. And, we have a resourceful, loyal, decent, upstanding main hero character. All the ingredients for a fine book and a good continuing series? You bet.

But here's the best part, and the thing that sets this apart and a bit above all the other middle grade fantasy quest adventures I've read recently. The book looks and feels and reads like a real western. From the opening page, when two brothers playing by a creek are approached by a creepy lone horseman, through a stand off on a lonely ranch, and on to a dusty town in search of the telegraph office, this could be Zane Grey or Owen Wister or Louis L'Amour. Lots of middle grade books go for a western feel. But most of them are sanitized and Disneyfied, or just count as westerns because there's a horse and maybe some cows.

This book is different. The scenes are well set and have an air of authenticity. It's more than just chickens in the yard, homemade furniture, and biscuits, although that's part of it. There's a way adults talk to each other, and kids talk to adults, and kids talk to and josh with each other. These kids meet up and form into a posse one by one. Each kid in the gang has to find his own place and fit in to the team. There's a way such kids size each other up, show their pride and maturity, come to terms with each other - and these authors get that right. There's a balance of pride and bluster and permitted tomfoolery and inappropriate talk and behavior. These are kids "The Virginian" would recognize and approve of.

In most books the kid characters just "become" a team and the story flows from there. Here, it all has to be played out according to the "code of the west", and respect has to be earned and courage proven. That strong undercurrent runs through the whole book as the delicate balance of the five "lost causes" kids shifts and resettles from scene to scene. Now, I may be putting too fine an edge on this. It's a zombie, action, fantasy, adventure with gunfights. But westerns still mean something and I think it's great that with this we have such an appealing middle grade variation. A neat and special find.

(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)