Sagebrush Song (Into The West #5) by J.A. Campbell - review

Sagebrush Song
Into the West #5
mg/ya fantasy (series)


J.A. Campbell


cover - all of the covers for this entire series have been beautifully relevant to the story covers.  I've never really been into western themes, but these are wonderful covers with beautiful imagery.  I'll include all the past covers with the newest, the final story's cover at the end of this post.  This editor might have dropped the ball on timely publication of Into the West, but the covers - those have been great.


Sagebrush Song is the second to last of this six part series about Tina - a young teen who has been reluctantly relocated to the wild west- and her cowboy Rowe, a young man who lives about 100 years before Tina...  They meet up and together take part in a bit of an adventure.

???

How is this possible?  Well, there's some time travel involved.  In the first four stories, Tina moved to a small town - pretty much a ghost town - with her family because her father's work made this necessary.  She's a city girl, a mall shopper, they type of young girl who polishes her nails, has manicures, face treatments, shops for fun, and pays attention to her looks.  Things are very different in the desert.  Now she's learning how to ride a horse for something besides show, has been helping out at a working ranch, and in the process learning more about desert/ranch life than she ever thought she wanted to know.  Once she inadvertantly goes through a canyon - one that everyone avoids because of strange, mysterious things that happen there.  Ended up getting mixed up with a cowboy and bandits...Turns out she was also quite a ways into the past.

In this past is a handsome young man named Rowe who works for a rancher who has been having some trouble with a rival rancher - trouble that includes horse stealing, shootouts, bandits and lots of danger.

In Sagebrush Song, Tina and Rowe have committed to a plan that will help Ol' Man Taggart keep his ranch and hopefully end the ranch war.  She's going to impersonate a young lady - meaning she has to behave demurely (something many young women of today have a hard time with, lol), wear a long dress and pretend to be a young lady relative of Ol'Man Taggart.  Angie - the Shaman in Training for Eli (medicine man of the local tribe) goes back in time with Tina and Rowe to help out with the plan.  Tina is planning to visit the sheriff to enlist legal help with Taggart's problems.  (Taggart's ranch is the very same ranch that Tina has been working at in her time)

Things don't go quite like they planned, in fact things get dangerous for the three.  However, where one door closes, another door opens....  They meet up with a few good men who are looking for a good cause.  Good thing, because while in town, a bad situation pops up...

In a short story format, Ms Campbell manages to tell a story complete with humor, the beginnings of first love, danger and suspense and sets things up for the final story in the series.  The dialogue between characters is deftly done - Rowe sounds like a cowboy from the early 1900's (how I would imagine one to sound) complete with the manners of that era, while the Medicine Man and his apprentice Angie sound how I would imagine tribal members of modern times to sound like - there's a small difference between Angie and Eli -  young Navajo and elder - which is appropriate.  All the side characters sound like they should.  

I'm not very good at summaries, trying to remember all that I like from a story.  But one of the things I remember enjoying quite a bit was the small little details Campbell included - such as Tina looking around the hotel room when staying the night in an inn.  This would be during their stay in the past.  There are enough details about the differences between now and then that I could just imagine what it would feel like to be in the past suddenly.  It would be strange - no electricity, running water, toilets that flush, so phones, etc.  J.A. Campbell did a good job of detailing some of this without overwhelming a reader with too much.

Sagebrush Song is an enjoyable read with humor, suspense, a few heartstopping moments, and the tender stirrings of a first love - one that might end up to be bittersweet, because the two live in two different time zones - not just a few hours apart, but decades apart!

If you haven't read the series yet, give this one a try.  There will be six parts in all - and each one is an enjoyable read - appropriate for young tweens to young adult.  If I could enjoy this series at 51 years of age - I think many people will like this series.

     



  



newest cover - final episode coming soon

(sorry guys - the new Blogger interface is even harder to format with than the old one, no rhyme, no reason, it's DRIVING ME CRAZY!)

Desert Dreams (Into The West #4) by J.A. Campbell

Desert Dreams
Into the West #4
e-book
J.A. Campbell
echelon press

cover love - I just love all the covers of this series. Each cover seems to get better, and they all tie into the series. This cover is especially scenic and reminds me of my long ago trip to Colorado/Utah area, where we drove through and around different canyons. The rock formations (I'm sure there is a more accurate terms for these particular canyon land) are way more colorful than they seem at first glance...

Desert Dreams is the fourth installment of the Into The West series of shorts. I like to call this a serial story, though Into The West is complete with the sixth installment. **if you haven't read ANY of this series, the beginning story is Westward, Yo!; it's a very good idea to start at the beginning of this series. At 99 cents per story, these e-books are reasonable and you get a lot for a buck.**There's an over-all story arc over the six stories and each of the short stories has it's own plot and resolution.
Fun for me is the cliff hangers at the end of each - I'm one of those who enjoy a good cliff hanger ending. In the last story (Silver Rush), there was the best ever cliff hanger. Tina (the main character) had this compelling NEED to find Rowe, so she prepared for a day or two in the desert and went through The Canyon to find him. Only things didn't go as she planned; she ended up wandering around and became disoriented. Silver Rush ended with her passing out and vaguely seeing someone looming over - friend or foe?
Luckily for Tina she was found by a friendly tribe of Native Americans. She meets up with Rowe and together they go on a trip to find a silver mine that will hopefully turn the tide concerning the range war between Matheson and Ol'Man Taggart. On this adventure Tina gets a bit more than she bargained for from a trail ride. Rowe and their guide teach her a bit of desert lore, how to find water, how to stay alive, etc. Their plan is to find the location of the silver mine, let Taggart know and stay out of the line of fire while performing their mission. Not easy to do.
While it's easy to sum up this installment in a paragraph, there is more than easily explained. I enjoyed reading about Tina's recovery from her desert/dehydration ordeal; the ride itself, with the sights and conversations between Rowe and Tina - they have the beginnings of a romance stirring. There's a couple times where danger lurks - a couple run-ins with human and animal enemies and Tina is put to the test on her survival skills.
Ms Campbell really seems to know how to capture how a normally intelligent and practical teen can make decisions that seem so good to her (Tina) at the time, yet are decisions that grownups - with our life experiences and wisdom wouldn't necessarily make. She's also pretty good at capturing the sometimes awkward and sweet beginnings of a romance without going over the top with the hot and heavy. Which is very refreshing. She has a way with words that tell a story without a lot of frills. There's enough description that you know Tina is in a desert, in a dangerous situation or having a sweet moment, yet you aren't overwhelmed with words. Sometimes authors go a little overboard with words. Ms Campbell does not, and she gets the point across. I enjoy her writing quite a bit - you might notice that I don't mention many young adult novels. I don't tend to read them, yet I've found myself enjoying each young adult novel written by J. A. Campbell.
I would recommend these short stories to many readers - especially to younger readers who find themselves needing to read something, yet don't like to read much. You're not going to get overwhelmed with formal dialog, formal writing and a lot of "filler" words. You're going to get a story that is tightly written and gets to the situations soon. I think a lot of different teens will enjoy this series. Best of all - the teens sound like teens. The dialog between characters sound refreshingly NORMAL.
Next in the series is Sagebrush Song Give this series a look - you won't regret it.