Another well-regarded book that I didn’t like. I wonder what’s going on.

Silver on the Road by Laura Anne Gilman features an alternative West where the Devil rules the Great Plains, preventing the United States from expanding any further west than the Mississippi. Enter Isobel Lacoyo Távora, the Devil’s foster child. On the day of her majority, she walks up to him and demands a job.

It’s a Western with a Latina main character (cool) and a bildungsroman about the Devil’s new left-hand man (awesome). How do you mess this up? Somehow, Laura Anne Gilman manages to do just that.

The biggest problem with this book is that Izzy doesn’t have clear goals. The Devil throws her out onto the road to learn by doing, without explaining what she’s supposed to do. Izzy spends the first third of the book complaining that she doesn’t know what to do, instead of, well, doing anything. Which isn’t entirely Izzy’s fault. The Devil pulled a Yoda-level it-will-all-become-clear stunt on her. He’s not a Jedi, he’s a businessman. He’s the sort of boss who would be very explicit with his minions and make sure he gets results.

The narrator keeps telling us that Izzy is not a namby-pamby young woman, but tough and capable. Izzy’s actions belie this. (See the bit about the whining.) Early in the book, because of some emotional upset, Izzy loses her appetite and tosses away her breakfast. That doesn’t make sense! She knows how precious calories are out on the road. If she were tough and capable, she would stuff that into her pockets for later.

The descriptions of the land in this book are beautiful. You can tell Gilman has been to all the sites she writes about and loves them deeply. But I think I’d rather deal with The Mechanical, which got me angry and excited at the same time, than with Silver on the Road, which left me cold.