Look, all you had to say was Western and horror in the same sentence and my ears perked up. Red Rabbit was both a book I never wanted to end and a book I couldn’t put down.

When a witch’s magic seems to cause as much trouble as help, a pair of cowboys decide to put a bounty on her head luring in unsavoury characters from all over the wild west. Caught in a web of mysterious circumstances an unlikely group of travellers find themselves drawn together to outride the demons on their tails and hunt the witch for themselves.

This book is wild. Every chapter unveiled another layer of horror to this wild west setting and I loved it. However, if you’re looking for something that will scare you silly, this won’t be it and you’ll still be able to sleep after reading a chapter or two. The horror itself lends itself primarily to the folkloric setting; the world-building is steeped in magic, people, and places that are dripping in blood and terror but it feels more like you’re exploring a western horror theme park than something that will give you nightmares. Along those lines, however, this book was incredibly fun to read and I highly recommend it.

Imagine if Stephen King wrote The Sisters Brothers and you would have this unexpectedly bewitching yet unceasingly horrifying story. Truly unlike anything I’ve read recently, author Alex Grecian blends an American Old West posse story with witch-hunters, demons, ghouls, ghosts, shapeshifters, and witches to create one of the best horror stories I’ve read in years.

The premise is basic to the genre - suspicious and frightened townspeople put out a bounty on the local witch with disastrous consequences. Everything else is completely off the rails, making this oddly refreshing.

The success here lies in the excellent character development that Grecian weaves throughout. From the mail-order-bride Rose who is made of sterner stuff than anyone imagines to the apparently mute girl-child who is so much more to the variety of cowboy caricatures who appear throughout - all elicit some level of pity or admiration from the reader. I was especially drawn to The Huntsman and would love a follow up book about him!

This one will make my Best of list for 2023.

A diverse group of folks in 1800s Kansas find themselves traveling together in order to help a self proclaimed witch hunter collect the bounty on a witch. Horror tinged hi-jinx and calamity meet them along the way. Sort of a Witcher-but-in-America vibe, which I was definitely here for.

I really, really enjoyed reading this. This was a fascinating and fun world, and the characters were hard to leave behind. The writing is descriptive but to the point, with thoughtful, memorable characters. The ending was not what I expected and I loved it.

I appreciated that it is not a gore centric horror novel. However, that’s compared to some things I’ve read, so:

Trigger warnings for: child death, cannibalism, animal violence and death, gore, self harm and suicide.

I’m a huge fan of the author’s Yard series and was excited to get this ARC from NetGalley.

Wholly original and a delightful genre mashup. The characters were a delight to get to know despite all being unreliable narrators. This resurgence of westerns in popular lit is refreshing and the melding of genres makes for fantastic reading.

The premise of this book intrigued me, and I really wanted to enjoy it but it just didn't quite do it for me. The cast of characters was quite large, and I felt as though I kept being introduced to new characters while I was still trying to grasp who was who from the original group.

The book started strong for me, but the plot line that was beginning to intrigue me resolved itself within the first third of the book and we were back to the slow burn with forgettable characters.

This novel, for me, is one of the best horror books of the year. It's folk horror, it's a western, it's a supernatural story, and more.

A bounty on a witch brings together a vastly different group of people who are on their way to kill the witch and collect the bounty. But along the way they'll meet ghouls, demons, ghosts, and a man of questionable human origins. And everywhere they go will be brutality and bloodshed.

What makes this book so good though are the characters. They are so vastly different yet this author fully fleshes them out without ever taking his foot off the gas of the main narrative. I was absolutely riveted by the pacing and the relationships that formed over the course of time.

The western setting was also fantastic. You can practically smell the horses and feel the dust in your nose as our group makes their way to their destination.

I honestly would have been fine if this book were longer and that's rarely the case with me. But I was so caught up in this world and story that I didn't want it to end.

Yes, it gets my highest recommendation and you should definitely pre-order a copy.

Entertaining premise and decent world building. Magic seemed natural. Diverse and initially entertaining characters with disparate goals. Lagged near the end when everything came to a not-that thrilling climax.

Red Rabbit is a phenomenal read. It gave me Neil Gaiman Stardust vibes, but set in the American West.
The world of Red Rabbit is inhabited by not only witches, but also by cannibalistic ghouls, body snatching demons, and ghosts with regrets.
The characters, even the worst of them, set up camp inside your soul and leave their mess everywhere. They broke my heart, but returned it whole. Even though the ending made me sad, I was absolutely satisfied.
It's listed as horror, and there are some horror elements, but I would categorize Red Rabbit as fantasy/paranormal.

I am a sucker for strange novels and I doubt I will read many to rival Alex Grecian’s Red Rabbit, a slow, mediative, meandering odyssey across the southern states of America in the years after the Civil War. Grecian has previous published several novels, novellas and graphic novels and if they are of the same standard of Red Rabbit then he is definitely an author I will be returning to, as this (sort of) western was incredibly striking. Normally I take the hype which accompanies book blurbs with a pinch of salt, but on this occasion name-checking Red Rabbit in comparison with Stephen Graham Jones, Nick Cutter, Alma Katsu (The Hunger), Charles Portis (True Grit), film The VVitch or tv show Deadwood are all on the money. These are only points of reference and ultimately Red Rabbit is a highly original work and compares favourably against any of these big names.

Others have called Red Rabbit Folk Horror; however, I am undecided how comfortable this very strange book fits that label, beyond how the supernatural element of the story worked. Set in Kansas, Arkansas and other southern states the participants have a peculiar acceptance of the supernatural, not enough to presume this is an ‘alternative’ version of post-Civil War America, but more than enough to raise eyebrows. Witchcraft is tolerated in some parts, there are even witch hunters (men) and seeing ghosts seems to be accepted as fairly normal. None of this is given much explanation and the end result is a superbly described and dangerous world where life is cheap, threat is everywhere, cannibalism exists, demons inhabit men and it is hard to trust anybody when one wrong move might turn you into a ghost, unable to leave the locality of your death.

At 464-pages Red Rabbit was a long book, but if you enjoy these rambling types of epics it did not feel like a slog and I quickly lost within its sprawling vastness, multiple narratives (there were a lot of characters) which took its time revealing what the main storyline truly was. At its heart Red Rabbit was an odyssey (with lots of things thrown in the way) of an odd group, who are thrown together by circumstances, to find the witch Sadie Grace. However, they all have different reasons for finding her, some have none at all, but principally for the large bounty on her head. Told from numerous perspectives, including Sadie and even some ghosts, she is aware of the group approaching her farm in Burden Countyand the threat they pose.

It was fascinating to see genuine witch hunters with supernatural powers, one of the group Tom Goggins uses a charm or hex to wake up the spirit of a dead man, who then follows the group and meets other ghosts along the way. These supernatural encounters had deeply melancholic feels to them, with some not realising they were dead or having any notion how long they passed away. Ghosts drift in and out of the plot as the group head to Burden County, with the Huntsman playing a bigger role as things move on. Connected to the witch, the Huntsman was a man of few words, but a truly outstanding character who oozed threat and danger in every move.

Why was the book called Red Rabbit? ‘Rabbit’ was a mute little girl a couple of vagabond directionless cowboys found under the charge of witch hunter Tom and because they do not exactly trust him tag along on his hunt for the witch. Soon they stumble upon the home of the recently widowed Rose Nettles, who takes the little girl under her wing and joins the party. Why do they join Tom’s hunt for the witch as they have no interest in killing her? Little Rabbit is obviously much more than she seems, even if the rest of her party do not quite see it.

Red Rabbit puts its many characters through the wringer and many are lost along the way with horrible toad possessions, demons, cannibal towns and all sorts of unpleasant episodes. Alex Grecian’s version of the wild west was vibrant, dangerous and you will soon be hedging your bets on the big showdown. Blessed with an outstanding and moving ending Red Rabbit goes out with all guns blazing.

I requested a digital copy in order to sample the prose on my phone (since I don't have a eReader) before requesting a physical copy for review. My review will be based on the physical ARC I read (if I qualify)