Pax Dakota
This is a fantasy novel involving an Indian spirit named Old Enemy, released accidentally from his medicine bundle prison while on its journey back to the spirit world from which it was cast out centuries ago. The only spirit that can stop him is Watcher, the spirit of the First People, housed in the body of a Dakota boy named Joseph Thorn. With the future of mankind at stake, Thorn must stop Old Enemy from causing a war between the white man and Dakota that could return the West to a continuation of the plains wars that ended a few years earlier in the 1890s.
In his tale of good versus evil, Ken Rand has written a fantasy/alternative history novel showing the struggle between spirits that could create havoc in our world. I thought the story was well written, for the most part, even providing a runaway prostitute as an unusual sidekick for the protagonist. My major problem occurred in the second half of the book, when Old Enemy continued to bring dead animals back to life to help him track down Joseph Thorn. I am not a big fan of fantasy novels, and may not understand how these stories are constructed, but I thought the continued “raising” of the dead animals seemed a bit far-fetched compared with the rest of the story. If you enjoy this genre of historical fiction, you may want to check it out for yourself.
