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Devil Dancers
The year is 1878 in the Arizona Territory. The small town of Guidance is on the brink of an economic explosion thanks to the unearthed copper residing in the nearby mountain. But buried deeper inside rests something wicked, threatening to be released by the progress of man.
Devil Dancers is the story of an unlikely trio who must band together and save the world from an ancient evil hellbent on severing the connection to the spirit of all living things.
Devil Dancers is the story of an unlikely trio who must band together and save the world from an ancient evil hellbent on severing the connection to the spirit of all living things.
- GenresHorror
188 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 21, 2025
3 people are currently reading
20 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
August 12, 2025
I've tried too many times to write this one, you get what you get (a review and a story), I apologize in advance for the mess. TL;DR: I recommend this book.
You know that thing that you've been trying to do for a long time but every time you touch it something gets in the way? My review of this book is it, just in the time it took me to type this single line I was interrupted 4 times, I'm telling you this to show you my endless dedication to being a yapper (and to deliver the reviews I say I will deliver😅).
Onto the review!
I loved this book, now, if you know me, you're probably a bit surprised to read that because me and western we don't get along but this book started with a bleak bang and established itself as being well and truly part of the horror genre before it confronted me with any westerny stuff. Then, it followed with some surprisingly funny moments with Hector, which I took an instant liking to (he's a smart ass with a drinking problem also known as just my type of fictional man), and Julie Ann who was definitely a woman after my own heart (she's a reader who hates her small town and also afflicted with the name Julie) and I was hooked. Even during the more western parts of the story horror lingered at the edges and when it came flooding the page it was really great.
I was interrupted 7 more times during the writing of the above paragraph and now 2 4 more time while typing this line I'm living my own horror story here, by now I have no choice but to assume that this book or at the very least this review, is cursed. Book Julie doesn't know how lucky she is that she's never had to encounter the endless horrors of phone calls and urgent emails that fail to not find you. Noon is not to early to crack a room temp energy drink is it?
Back to it.
The authors managed to impart a sense of physicality to the space the story was taking place in without getting overly descriptive about it, a skill I greatly appreciated.
The imagery was just gruesome enough (content warning if animal deaths are particularly triggering to you, ).
Oh and there's even a bit of the story where it felt very zombie adjacent, much to my delight.
Many thanks to Bo Chappell for sending me a copy of this book for review consideration.
Yapper out.
You know that thing that you've been trying to do for a long time but every time you touch it something gets in the way? My review of this book is it, just in the time it took me to type this single line I was interrupted 4 times, I'm telling you this to show you my endless dedication to being a yapper (and to deliver the reviews I say I will deliver😅).
Onto the review!
I loved this book, now, if you know me, you're probably a bit surprised to read that because me and western we don't get along but this book started with a bleak bang and established itself as being well and truly part of the horror genre before it confronted me with any westerny stuff. Then, it followed with some surprisingly funny moments with Hector, which I took an instant liking to (he's a smart ass with a drinking problem also known as just my type of fictional man), and Julie Ann who was definitely a woman after my own heart (she's a reader who hates her small town and also afflicted with the name Julie) and I was hooked. Even during the more western parts of the story horror lingered at the edges and when it came flooding the page it was really great.
I was interrupted 7 more times during the writing of the above paragraph and now 2 4 more time while typing this line I'm living my own horror story here, by now I have no choice but to assume that this book or at the very least this review, is cursed. Book Julie doesn't know how lucky she is that she's never had to encounter the endless horrors of phone calls and urgent emails that fail to not find you. Noon is not to early to crack a room temp energy drink is it?
Back to it.
The authors managed to impart a sense of physicality to the space the story was taking place in without getting overly descriptive about it, a skill I greatly appreciated.
The imagery was just gruesome enough (content warning if animal deaths are particularly triggering to you, ).
Oh and there's even a bit of the story where it felt very zombie adjacent, much to my delight.
Many thanks to Bo Chappell for sending me a copy of this book for review consideration.
Yapper out.
Read
April 27, 2025Colorful characters, imaginative evils, and full of action. Devil Dancers is a wonderfully dark and original supernatural western. Read it before the night gets hungry.
April 29, 2025
"An engrossing, fast-paced western horror tale that will fill your head with carnage, nightmares and spine-chilling imagery you'll never forget."
I'd like to thank the authors for sending me an ARC copy of this book, because I had a blast reading it.
Hector is running from something. Julie Ann longs for adventure. Jack is trying hard to belong. All three find themselves in the town of Guidance on the night where hell descends from the mountains...
I was hooked as soon as I started reading this novel. So it didn't take long to finish it, and I really enjoyed it! I especially loved the three main characters, who tell their own story via multiple POV. I enjoyed getting to know each one individually, and how they came together. The mythology behind the story also worked really well with the setting and the location.
And the horror imagery woven throughout was great as well.
This was a lot of fun! Although, there's plenty of heartbreak too.
I'd like to thank the authors for sending me an ARC copy of this book, because I had a blast reading it.
Hector is running from something. Julie Ann longs for adventure. Jack is trying hard to belong. All three find themselves in the town of Guidance on the night where hell descends from the mountains...
I was hooked as soon as I started reading this novel. So it didn't take long to finish it, and I really enjoyed it! I especially loved the three main characters, who tell their own story via multiple POV. I enjoyed getting to know each one individually, and how they came together. The mythology behind the story also worked really well with the setting and the location.
And the horror imagery woven throughout was great as well.
This was a lot of fun! Although, there's plenty of heartbreak too.
May 27, 2025
I had a whole lot of fun with this and would read more by the same authors. It does take its time to get going and could have been edited more tightly, but the richness and authenticity of the language and the obvious pleasure taken in telling the tale more than make up for it. Good stuff.
May 10, 2025
I never realized it before, but I think westerns might actually be my thing. My favorite books of all time include The Hummingbird's Daughter, Blood Meridian, and Lone Women, and now this is another five star read!
This is a fun medium-paced historical western horror. It has a bit of humor and plenty of action, but not so much that it's hard to keep track of what's going on. I also liked the fact that I learned some Spanish words that I didn't know. I have a basic understanding of Spanish, but there were some words and phrases that I had to look up and I actually like when a book helps me learn things. I felt it wasn't too much that it became distracting, just a few phrases and sentences every now and then.
It has good amount of small town western horror with some mythology and I even want to say cosmic horror? I still have a hard time grasping what is considered cosmic horror or not, honestly, and I feel like any details on what makes me think that this book has cosmic horror elements might be spoilers.
Anyway, this book was an excellent read!
This is a fun medium-paced historical western horror. It has a bit of humor and plenty of action, but not so much that it's hard to keep track of what's going on. I also liked the fact that I learned some Spanish words that I didn't know. I have a basic understanding of Spanish, but there were some words and phrases that I had to look up and I actually like when a book helps me learn things. I felt it wasn't too much that it became distracting, just a few phrases and sentences every now and then.
It has good amount of small town western horror with some mythology and I even want to say cosmic horror? I still have a hard time grasping what is considered cosmic horror or not, honestly, and I feel like any details on what makes me think that this book has cosmic horror elements might be spoilers.
Anyway, this book was an excellent read!
May 20, 2025
Books like this one make me relish in the fact I’m not a fast reader. Well written and action packed from start to finish. Bravo, gentlemen. Well done.
May 6, 2025
DEVIL DANCERS is a fast-paced western horror novel with an interesting premise. The prose is excellent and the stream-of-consciousness writing style is not something you see every day.
The reason I gave this only four stars is the characters. At times, it felt like there were too many for such a short work, and the extra characters kept the main characters from being as well-developed as they could have been.
Overall, it’s a great story with prose that will draw you in and keep you entertained!
The reason I gave this only four stars is the characters. At times, it felt like there were too many for such a short work, and the extra characters kept the main characters from being as well-developed as they could have been.
Overall, it’s a great story with prose that will draw you in and keep you entertained!
May 12, 2025
Merely mentioning the Old West arouses near-legendary associations singularly embedded in the collective American consciousness. That era of Manifest Destiny, of painted vistas and unending horizons. Cowboys and Indians, gunslingers and cattle rustlers, hard days and long nights on the open range, showdowns at high noon. It was the time of Dodge City and Deadwood, the Pony Express and the Oregon Trail, Jesse James, Billy the Kid, and the shootout at the O.K. Corral.
Even while it was happening, the period of westward expansion was romanticized in dime novels and newspaper articles fed to a public fascinated with the lawless frontier. Arising from those garish 19th century rags into one of the pillars of publishing, what we know as the Western has flourished in modern times due to an easy hybridization with other genres. Countless romance novels employ western motifs, and a surge in ‘horror-westerns’ inspired by the weird writings of Joe R. Lansdale and movies like Ravenous, The Burrowers, and Bone Tomahawk has taken root in recent decades. It’s in this latter vein that publisher Acid Rain unleashes Bo Chappell and A.A. Medina’s Devil Dancers, a guns-blazing, two-fisted novel that unabashedly injects some wild back into the west.
In 1878, young Julie Ann endures a dull pioneer existence tending the farm of her layabout father Earl just outside the dry-gulch Arizona mining community of Guidance. Bright, attractive, and headstrong, Julie Ann seeks escape in the daydreams found in adventure books, but her longing for excitement is unexpectedly fulfilled one night by the arrival of Hector, a bantido with a bagful of gold nuggets who’s on the lamb from the law. When Earl saves Hector from a beating in Guidance’s saloon, he inadvertently incurs the wrath of Jerald, the trigger-happy sociopathic leader of the gang of violent bank robbers Hector once rode with and the town’s arrogant, greedy Sheriff Appleton, who’s eager to bring in Hector dead or alive for the reward money. With both parties converging on Earl’s farmstead and Julie Ann caught in the crosshairs, her only hope is Jack, Appleton’s disrespected but level-headed Native American-born deputy, who’s desperate to minimize the potential bloodshed. Unbeknownst to any of them, however, a primordial evil has been unknowingly awakened in the nearby mountain mine, and soon what begins as a struggle for law and order escalates into a battle for survival as Guidance’s population is assailed by a demonic entity hungry for the spirit of the world and capable of transforming the living into unearthly flesh-eating monsters. Assailed by such forces, can Jack, Julie Ann, and Hector keep their wits long enough to lead the others to safety, or is it already too late?
If Devil Dancers were a movie, it’s high-concept Hollywood pitch would be Tombstone-meets-The Evil Dead. Nearly every scene within its brisk 188 pages is a tour de force of (sometimes literally) explosive action, hard-punching fights, furious gunplay, and riveting bloodshed. Chappell (no stranger to the horror-western subgenre after the publication of his award-winning 2016 novel Year 47) and Medina spare no detail in properly evoking the time period, and this solid historical basis bolsters the narrative thrust once the horror elements come to the fore. The novel’s ghastly set pieces never fail to engross (and sometimes gleefully gross-out) readers; one particularly skin-crawling sequence involves a murder of eyeless crows, while another features a swarm of demonic killer bees. But the book’s grisly pièce de résistance comes once Guidance’s citizens have become possessed by the mountain’s sinister scourge, as a man’s severed head (complete with top hat!) takes to the air to bite his victims amid the chaos.
More than any Grand Guignol theatrics, though, the novel’s true heart is its characters. The authors wisely upend stock Western clichés, instead taking valuable time to introduce and develop believable, oftentimes conflicted, three-dimensional figures with realistic strengths and weaknesses. Hector, for instance, is by turns drunken, dour, impulsive, and heroic, a haunted man anxious to atone for the terrors of his past. Similarly, Jack is portrayed at odds with himself; he’s been raised in accordance with the white man’s ways, but no matter how mannered or cultured or skilled he is, few of Guidance’s townspeople regard him as anything other than a Native curiosity at best or a joke at worst (many derisively nickname him ‘Apple Jack’: red on the outside, white on the inside). Yet it’s his cultural connection to the encroaching evil that rouses memories related his true Apache heritage and allows him to fully embrace the destiny he was always meant to fulfill.
Unlike some co-authored works, Devil Dancers’ prose is seamlessly written, bountiful with humor, wit, suspense and, at times, moving poignancy. More than anything, it’s rip-roarin’, rootin’-tootin’ six-gun fun, a novel that grips you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the finale, and it’s for that reason that I grant it a well-deserved 4 (out of 5) here on Goodreads. Hop in the saddle and hang on, pilgrim, you’re in for a wild ride.
Even while it was happening, the period of westward expansion was romanticized in dime novels and newspaper articles fed to a public fascinated with the lawless frontier. Arising from those garish 19th century rags into one of the pillars of publishing, what we know as the Western has flourished in modern times due to an easy hybridization with other genres. Countless romance novels employ western motifs, and a surge in ‘horror-westerns’ inspired by the weird writings of Joe R. Lansdale and movies like Ravenous, The Burrowers, and Bone Tomahawk has taken root in recent decades. It’s in this latter vein that publisher Acid Rain unleashes Bo Chappell and A.A. Medina’s Devil Dancers, a guns-blazing, two-fisted novel that unabashedly injects some wild back into the west.
In 1878, young Julie Ann endures a dull pioneer existence tending the farm of her layabout father Earl just outside the dry-gulch Arizona mining community of Guidance. Bright, attractive, and headstrong, Julie Ann seeks escape in the daydreams found in adventure books, but her longing for excitement is unexpectedly fulfilled one night by the arrival of Hector, a bantido with a bagful of gold nuggets who’s on the lamb from the law. When Earl saves Hector from a beating in Guidance’s saloon, he inadvertently incurs the wrath of Jerald, the trigger-happy sociopathic leader of the gang of violent bank robbers Hector once rode with and the town’s arrogant, greedy Sheriff Appleton, who’s eager to bring in Hector dead or alive for the reward money. With both parties converging on Earl’s farmstead and Julie Ann caught in the crosshairs, her only hope is Jack, Appleton’s disrespected but level-headed Native American-born deputy, who’s desperate to minimize the potential bloodshed. Unbeknownst to any of them, however, a primordial evil has been unknowingly awakened in the nearby mountain mine, and soon what begins as a struggle for law and order escalates into a battle for survival as Guidance’s population is assailed by a demonic entity hungry for the spirit of the world and capable of transforming the living into unearthly flesh-eating monsters. Assailed by such forces, can Jack, Julie Ann, and Hector keep their wits long enough to lead the others to safety, or is it already too late?
If Devil Dancers were a movie, it’s high-concept Hollywood pitch would be Tombstone-meets-The Evil Dead. Nearly every scene within its brisk 188 pages is a tour de force of (sometimes literally) explosive action, hard-punching fights, furious gunplay, and riveting bloodshed. Chappell (no stranger to the horror-western subgenre after the publication of his award-winning 2016 novel Year 47) and Medina spare no detail in properly evoking the time period, and this solid historical basis bolsters the narrative thrust once the horror elements come to the fore. The novel’s ghastly set pieces never fail to engross (and sometimes gleefully gross-out) readers; one particularly skin-crawling sequence involves a murder of eyeless crows, while another features a swarm of demonic killer bees. But the book’s grisly pièce de résistance comes once Guidance’s citizens have become possessed by the mountain’s sinister scourge, as a man’s severed head (complete with top hat!) takes to the air to bite his victims amid the chaos.
More than any Grand Guignol theatrics, though, the novel’s true heart is its characters. The authors wisely upend stock Western clichés, instead taking valuable time to introduce and develop believable, oftentimes conflicted, three-dimensional figures with realistic strengths and weaknesses. Hector, for instance, is by turns drunken, dour, impulsive, and heroic, a haunted man anxious to atone for the terrors of his past. Similarly, Jack is portrayed at odds with himself; he’s been raised in accordance with the white man’s ways, but no matter how mannered or cultured or skilled he is, few of Guidance’s townspeople regard him as anything other than a Native curiosity at best or a joke at worst (many derisively nickname him ‘Apple Jack’: red on the outside, white on the inside). Yet it’s his cultural connection to the encroaching evil that rouses memories related his true Apache heritage and allows him to fully embrace the destiny he was always meant to fulfill.
Unlike some co-authored works, Devil Dancers’ prose is seamlessly written, bountiful with humor, wit, suspense and, at times, moving poignancy. More than anything, it’s rip-roarin’, rootin’-tootin’ six-gun fun, a novel that grips you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the finale, and it’s for that reason that I grant it a well-deserved 4 (out of 5) here on Goodreads. Hop in the saddle and hang on, pilgrim, you’re in for a wild ride.
June 10, 2025
When an enigmatic stranger rides into a small, quiet town in the American Old West, trouble follows hot on his heels. Add in a crooked sheriff, his good-natured deputy, a couple of town drunks, and a hot-headed local beauty, and you've got the makings of a tale as old as time, one told hundreds, if not thousands of times in the pages of countless pulpy cowboy novels.
However, in "Devil Dancers," authors Bo Chappell and Adrian Medina (writing as A.A. Medina) take those familiar plot devices and turn them on their ears. What starts out as a conventional set-up quickly evolves into fast-paced showdown between good and evil, as a dark force is unwittingly set upon the otherwise idyllic town of Guidance.
When Hector, an erstwhile outlaw, rides into town, he's greeted with suspicion and derision, both because he's Mexican, and because he's an unfamiliar face. He's got enough gold to throw around to make himself at least somewhat welcome, at least until a posse of his former compadres -- fellow outlaws on the lam -- come looking for him. They stir up enough trouble to make Hector beat a hasty retreat, aided by a friendly local and his daughter, Julie Ann. When both the criminal gang and Guidance's smarmy sheriff, Appleton, and his young deputy Jack track Hector down, things go sideways fast. Turns out Hector and his partners in crime aren't the worst trouble headed Guidance's way, and before the night's over, the town is overrun with carnivorous children, killer bees (literally), a murder of murderous crows, and plenty of other strange, grotesque, and downright terrifying phenomena.
As one by one, the colorful cast of characters is whittled down, it's up to Hector, Julie Ann, and Jack to try and not only make sense of the darkness that's taken over the town, but find a way to stop it before it spreads. To do this, Jack will have to embrace his long-forgotten roots as an Apache, Hector will have to make peace with his tumultuous past, and Julie Ann will have to realize she doesn't need a man to save her.
"Devil Dancers" takes a while to find its stride, but as it progresses, it's a lot of fun to read. Some of the imagery is truly terrifying, and while I wish there had been more explanation as to the origin and source of the evil infecting the good folks of Guidance, the climactic battle pitting our heroes against the "big boss" is exciting and satisfying.
For the most part, "Devil Dancers" doesn't take itself too seriously, and you can tell Chappell and Medina had fun with the prose. There are passages that read as lyrically as any in a Louis L'Amour tale, while others fly with the kind of sardonic, if not vulgar wit you find in a Tarantino movie. In fact, the vibe I got while reading struck me very much as being Tarantino-esque, or Robert Rodriguez-like: violent, witty, gritty, and dark. "Devil Dancers" is pulp fiction at its best, and it makes for a fun time reading.
However, in "Devil Dancers," authors Bo Chappell and Adrian Medina (writing as A.A. Medina) take those familiar plot devices and turn them on their ears. What starts out as a conventional set-up quickly evolves into fast-paced showdown between good and evil, as a dark force is unwittingly set upon the otherwise idyllic town of Guidance.
When Hector, an erstwhile outlaw, rides into town, he's greeted with suspicion and derision, both because he's Mexican, and because he's an unfamiliar face. He's got enough gold to throw around to make himself at least somewhat welcome, at least until a posse of his former compadres -- fellow outlaws on the lam -- come looking for him. They stir up enough trouble to make Hector beat a hasty retreat, aided by a friendly local and his daughter, Julie Ann. When both the criminal gang and Guidance's smarmy sheriff, Appleton, and his young deputy Jack track Hector down, things go sideways fast. Turns out Hector and his partners in crime aren't the worst trouble headed Guidance's way, and before the night's over, the town is overrun with carnivorous children, killer bees (literally), a murder of murderous crows, and plenty of other strange, grotesque, and downright terrifying phenomena.
As one by one, the colorful cast of characters is whittled down, it's up to Hector, Julie Ann, and Jack to try and not only make sense of the darkness that's taken over the town, but find a way to stop it before it spreads. To do this, Jack will have to embrace his long-forgotten roots as an Apache, Hector will have to make peace with his tumultuous past, and Julie Ann will have to realize she doesn't need a man to save her.
"Devil Dancers" takes a while to find its stride, but as it progresses, it's a lot of fun to read. Some of the imagery is truly terrifying, and while I wish there had been more explanation as to the origin and source of the evil infecting the good folks of Guidance, the climactic battle pitting our heroes against the "big boss" is exciting and satisfying.
For the most part, "Devil Dancers" doesn't take itself too seriously, and you can tell Chappell and Medina had fun with the prose. There are passages that read as lyrically as any in a Louis L'Amour tale, while others fly with the kind of sardonic, if not vulgar wit you find in a Tarantino movie. In fact, the vibe I got while reading struck me very much as being Tarantino-esque, or Robert Rodriguez-like: violent, witty, gritty, and dark. "Devil Dancers" is pulp fiction at its best, and it makes for a fun time reading.
December 16, 2025
This book is a great mix of Western adventure and horror. Follow three unlikely allies as they battle an ancient evil intent on taking over the town of Guidance, Arizona! Be prepared for a few deaths (both human and animal), a swarm of supernatural bees and ancient Indian rites.
The narrator took a bit of getting used due to his husky/raspy voice, but once I did, he was perfect for this book and added a lot to my enjoyment.
The narrator took a bit of getting used due to his husky/raspy voice, but once I did, he was perfect for this book and added a lot to my enjoyment.
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