Ken Rand’s Pax Dakota
Pax Dakota
Ken Rand
Five Star (265 pp, $25.95, May 2008)
Reviewed by Bill Ward
In 1899 the United States shares an uneasy peace with its western neighbor, the Dakota, a confederated nation of Native American peoples that had joined forces to defeat the US in a war almost three decades earlier. The Pax Dakota, the peace that governs these two competing powers, is ever in danger of breaking as racism, ambition, and old animosities on both sides threaten to plunge the US and Dakota nations back into a bloody war. Into this mix steps the Old Enemy, a malignant spirit that seeks enough souls to power its return trip back to heaven — back to the side of Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit that had exiled the Old Enemy to the Earth in the time of the First People.
In Pax Dakota Ken Rand gives us an immediately compelling alternate historical setting seasoned with a Native American flavor that gives it an exotic, unexpected quality. But primarily this is an action story, a Weird Western with horrific elements that quickly ratchets up the action and never lets up until the final scene.
The book opens with the death of Iron Shield in 1883, great war leader of the Dakota and architect of their new nation. Upon his death an entity known as the Watcher is released to find a new host — the benevolent Watcher is a guardian spirit of humanity, a being that imprinted Iron Shield with the idea for the Pax Dakota while still just a boy. The Watcher’s plan had always been to contain the prison housing the Old Enemy within Dakota territory so that the Dakota could maintain a vigil there. However, the prison of the Old Enemy, a region know as Devil’s Clay, remains in US territory after the peace, and the Watcher must quickly launch a plan that will bring about the final confrontation with the Old Enemy.
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