Where Gods Fear to Go is the final instalment in the West of West series and I loved it.  This series is so good, the characters are great fun, the world is crazy, the creatures and the threats they pose intense.  Literally everyone should read this series and take a moment to shout ‘wootah’ as loud as they can into the night.

Plus, I thought that the scary factor couldn’t get much worse than The Land You Never Leave but it seems that Mr Watson was just warming up.

I’m not going to really elaborate on the plot, the whole series is actually a quest that is packed with danger and monsters and I enjoyed reading about the characters and their ever developing relationships so much that it gave me a warm glow.

To be honest the things I really love about this series and that worked so well for me were the setting, the sense of humour and the way that the author managed to surprise me at every turn.  He puts his characters through the wringer and isn’t afraid to kill people off but more often than that his creativity in terms of taking a situation where there seems to be no possible solution and pulling off a ridiculous reprieve for his cast, well, its impressive to say the least.  The second instalment, I admit, I was scared at almost every turn that my favourite characters were about to meet their maker and I didn’t think that the Wootah and Owsla could suffer much more – but I was very wrong.  this ending is just intense.  Slight spoiler – I’d also say the ending is a little bittersweet but still so good and so very apt.

I guess I really need to elaborate on the sense of place. For me it feels like a mashup of The Vikings and The Gladiator.  The Wootah and the Owsla are so different.  The Wootah oddly useless in terms of prowess and skill but full of heart and genuinely fearless.  The Owsla are artificially enhanced warriors, they can run faster and fight harder than anyone else, their hearing and eyesight is better – in fact they’re positively bionic.  Together they both have things to learn from each other and this is part of the beauty of the overall dynamic, for me at least.  The Wootah teach the Owsla about love, about guilt and about compassion, the Owsla help the Wootah to become stronger and more focused. They even each other out or make each other better somehow.  On top of this the creatures are some crazy fubar mix up of badass madness and the conclusion, well, make sure you have time set aside because you won’t be able to put it down when you reach the final stretch.  It’s all so beautifully incongruous and unexpected that it works perfectly.

Now, I feel like this is something of a short review, necessarily so, because I don’t want to say too much about the plot or give away elements from the first two books and so I’m keeping it short, sweet and unspoilery.

In conclusion, this is a series that I loved. I was hooked very early and the adventure and tension were just excellent all the way through.  It was crazy fun, it had me laughing out loud at times and I confess I may have yelled “wootah’ on one occasion. Or maybe two.

All that being said, I must also stress that alongside the humour there is also a lot of fighting and plenty of bloodshed as a result, some of the characters along the way are hideous, some characters die and the ones that live have a way of spouting profanity as though it’s going out of fashion – that’s just a little nod in case those things may not be for you.

I received a copy courtesy of the publisher, through Netgalley, for which my thanks.  The above is my own opinion.

Rating 5*