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Skye's West #14
The Fire Arrow
Barnaby Skye, the most durable and unforgettable character in modern Western fiction, returns in this harrowing tale of survival from his early years in the Rockies.
In the midst of a brutal winter, Skye's beloved Crow Indian wife, Victoria, is critically wounded when a Blackfeet raiding party attacks a Crow hunting camp. Despite Skye's attempts at doctoring, Victoria's life hangs in the balance as the two, left alone in the frozen wilderness, struggle to survive cold and starvation.
Miraculously, an old mare and her foal wander into their camp. Victoria believes they have been sent by her spirit guide, and finds the strength to ride. Skye and his wife make their way toward Victoria's home village on the Musselshell River. Breaking winter trail is a slow and laborious process, but at the end of the journey they will find peace. Or will they?
Skye's love of whiskey puts his life, and Victoria's, in peril when they encounter a renegade band of Yankee traders taking a wagon-load of a cheap and poisonous raw alcohol to trade among the Indians. Their leader, a former West Point officer, forces Skye to guide them, but all the while the legendary mountain man plots to ruin their deadly enterprise.
In The Fire Arrow , Richard S. Wheeler has fashioned an unforgettable tale of love and survival in the unforgiving wilderness of the American West.
In the midst of a brutal winter, Skye's beloved Crow Indian wife, Victoria, is critically wounded when a Blackfeet raiding party attacks a Crow hunting camp. Despite Skye's attempts at doctoring, Victoria's life hangs in the balance as the two, left alone in the frozen wilderness, struggle to survive cold and starvation.
Miraculously, an old mare and her foal wander into their camp. Victoria believes they have been sent by her spirit guide, and finds the strength to ride. Skye and his wife make their way toward Victoria's home village on the Musselshell River. Breaking winter trail is a slow and laborious process, but at the end of the journey they will find peace. Or will they?
Skye's love of whiskey puts his life, and Victoria's, in peril when they encounter a renegade band of Yankee traders taking a wagon-load of a cheap and poisonous raw alcohol to trade among the Indians. Their leader, a former West Point officer, forces Skye to guide them, but all the while the legendary mountain man plots to ruin their deadly enterprise.
In The Fire Arrow , Richard S. Wheeler has fashioned an unforgettable tale of love and survival in the unforgiving wilderness of the American West.
- GenresWesterns
336 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
About the author
Richard S. Wheeler
125 books68 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
There are other authors with this name. One writes Marine Corps history. Another, Civil War history. Another writes in the political sciences.
Richard S. (Shaw) Wheeler was born in Milwaukee in 1935 and grew up in nearby Wauwatosa.
There are other authors with this name. One writes Marine Corps history. Another, Civil War history. Another writes in the political sciences.
Richard S. (Shaw) Wheeler was born in Milwaukee in 1935 and grew up in nearby Wauwatosa.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 3, 2026
The Fire Arrow starts out promising with an intriguing hook, however one can’t help but notice that as the story progresses, the writing and attention to detail gets lazier in turn. This is particularly concerning, considering this laziness becomes apparent as early as the second chapter. Whether Wheeler’s inconsistencies stem from a lack of editing or creative writing as a whole—they take away greatly from what could have been an otherwise well-written story. At best, it’s distracting to have to plow through several chapters that repeat the same mundane routines, and at worse, it turns readers off of a book entirely.
Wheeler seems to have a very specific and very vexing habit of repetition. Now, I don’t mind repetition when it serves a purpose, but unfortunately, spending paragraphs describing the complexities of building a fire—then continuing to repeat that structure every single time our character needs to build a fire—does not serve a purpose to the story, nor the audience.
Instead of gaining insight on our two main characters Skye, and his Crow wife, Victoria, we spend the entirety of the novel feeling oddly estranged from them. We don’t truly know how they feel or what they think, because Wheeler never bothers to delve into their relationship, or to make his characters come alive. It’s constant, never-ending exposition. He may write that Skye feels cold and sees a “wall of white,” but simply repeats these descriptors throughout the book without bothering to immerse us in the setting itself. This novel is the greatest example of telling vs. showing. Wheeler tells us everything through Skye, but he does not show us Skye’s world.
To go hand in hand with the flat characters and equally as flat dialogue, there is virtually no character development in this book. After several grueling chapters of chopping wood, one of our first interactions outside of Skye and his wife are with a pair of traders who happen upon their camp. They appear hospitable at first, though their ulterior motive is only to get them drunk and steal their supplies, in which they succeed. Instead of learning from this moment, Skye again accepts a drink from a group of traders later on, who eventually end up enslaving him under a forged, drunken contract.
These fur traders hate the natives, and see them as an inferior race to be exterminated by way of ‘natural selection,’ and a bit of coercion. We come to know the leader of the militant trade group, Skittles, a ruthless man who threatens to not only kill Skye but also rape and kill his wife if he tries to escape. To save the more obvious details of their trading expeditions, they stop at Victoria’s band to trade with the people there, and end up ravaging the village instead, leaving many dead, poisoned and without pelts.
Skye and his wife, now reunited, track him down to avenge their friends, and instead of providing readers with somewhat of a satisfying ending, what does Wheeler do? Well, he does a 180, of course. Don’t we all want to see the redemption arc of a man who takes pleasure in leveraging his advantage over entire civilizations? No. It’s as if Wheeler forgot what drew readers in to begin with. It was not in hopes of witnessing Skittles have a change of “heart,” it was in hopes of seeing him dead, and Skye finally reclaiming his dignity.
The worse part about The Fire Arrow’s ending, is that it fails to make even the slightest of sense. A man who spent his entire life upending the lives of others simply because he viewed them as inferior, is now distraught and wants to “start his life over” after coming across one of Skye’s horses, shot dead in the crossfire of a frenzy. You heard it first here, folks—no, no, he doesn’t want to change because he realizes how poorly he has treated other human beings, he wants to change because of an animal.
Skittles has such little regard for the life of inferior races that he has more empathy for a horse than a human. Makes sense, right? And instead of shooting the man, Skye also has such little regard for his own wife and adopted community that he lets him off scott-free. It’s disgusting, and the more I delve into this book the more I feel like Victoria is merely a token character of a wife, subjected to the many insensitive and borderline fetishized whims of this Author—who doesn’t bother to meaningfully engage in Victoria’s culture and uses her instead for unfunny comedic relief. Haha, indigenous woman say funny English expletives in her only lines of dialogue! Haha, me caveman and this funny. Ugh…
TLDR; This book was clearly written by a man.
Wheeler seems to have a very specific and very vexing habit of repetition. Now, I don’t mind repetition when it serves a purpose, but unfortunately, spending paragraphs describing the complexities of building a fire—then continuing to repeat that structure every single time our character needs to build a fire—does not serve a purpose to the story, nor the audience.
Instead of gaining insight on our two main characters Skye, and his Crow wife, Victoria, we spend the entirety of the novel feeling oddly estranged from them. We don’t truly know how they feel or what they think, because Wheeler never bothers to delve into their relationship, or to make his characters come alive. It’s constant, never-ending exposition. He may write that Skye feels cold and sees a “wall of white,” but simply repeats these descriptors throughout the book without bothering to immerse us in the setting itself. This novel is the greatest example of telling vs. showing. Wheeler tells us everything through Skye, but he does not show us Skye’s world.
To go hand in hand with the flat characters and equally as flat dialogue, there is virtually no character development in this book. After several grueling chapters of chopping wood, one of our first interactions outside of Skye and his wife are with a pair of traders who happen upon their camp. They appear hospitable at first, though their ulterior motive is only to get them drunk and steal their supplies, in which they succeed. Instead of learning from this moment, Skye again accepts a drink from a group of traders later on, who eventually end up enslaving him under a forged, drunken contract.
These fur traders hate the natives, and see them as an inferior race to be exterminated by way of ‘natural selection,’ and a bit of coercion. We come to know the leader of the militant trade group, Skittles, a ruthless man who threatens to not only kill Skye but also rape and kill his wife if he tries to escape. To save the more obvious details of their trading expeditions, they stop at Victoria’s band to trade with the people there, and end up ravaging the village instead, leaving many dead, poisoned and without pelts.
Skye and his wife, now reunited, track him down to avenge their friends, and instead of providing readers with somewhat of a satisfying ending, what does Wheeler do? Well, he does a 180, of course. Don’t we all want to see the redemption arc of a man who takes pleasure in leveraging his advantage over entire civilizations? No. It’s as if Wheeler forgot what drew readers in to begin with. It was not in hopes of witnessing Skittles have a change of “heart,” it was in hopes of seeing him dead, and Skye finally reclaiming his dignity.
The worse part about The Fire Arrow’s ending, is that it fails to make even the slightest of sense. A man who spent his entire life upending the lives of others simply because he viewed them as inferior, is now distraught and wants to “start his life over” after coming across one of Skye’s horses, shot dead in the crossfire of a frenzy. You heard it first here, folks—no, no, he doesn’t want to change because he realizes how poorly he has treated other human beings, he wants to change because of an animal.
Skittles has such little regard for the life of inferior races that he has more empathy for a horse than a human. Makes sense, right? And instead of shooting the man, Skye also has such little regard for his own wife and adopted community that he lets him off scott-free. It’s disgusting, and the more I delve into this book the more I feel like Victoria is merely a token character of a wife, subjected to the many insensitive and borderline fetishized whims of this Author—who doesn’t bother to meaningfully engage in Victoria’s culture and uses her instead for unfunny comedic relief. Haha, indigenous woman say funny English expletives in her only lines of dialogue! Haha, me caveman and this funny. Ugh…
TLDR; This book was clearly written by a man.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 7, 2022
Could have been 4 stars but ending was a big disappointment. Englishman Barnaby Skye and Crow bride Victoria endure much suffering, pain, and misery at the hands of unscrupulous American fur traders. The traders give the Crows poisoned liquor in exchange for prime furs, and most of the village is decimated. Barnaby and Victoria survive and seek revenge; they manage to destroy the remaining liquor so other villages are spared, but the leader of the traders has a change of heart and asks Barnaby for forgiveness for his sins, which Barnaby does. This trader is a mass murderer who has killed without remorse and does not deserve atonement or absolution, so it is difficult to accept Barnaby's decision. Other authors such as Will Henry or Gordon Shirreffs would have handled this much differently.
One oddity: the events are told chronologically, but the dates are given haphazardly; for example, on p. 26 it is November, p. 37 it is October, p. 49 it is November, p.115 it is late November, p. 120 mid-November, p.143 it is March, p.193 it is February, p. 198 it is January. This shows either carelessness on the part of the author and/or the editor. I do not plan to read any more of this series if the author does not seem to care about details.
One oddity: the events are told chronologically, but the dates are given haphazardly; for example, on p. 26 it is November, p. 37 it is October, p. 49 it is November, p.115 it is late November, p. 120 mid-November, p.143 it is March, p.193 it is February, p. 198 it is January. This shows either carelessness on the part of the author and/or the editor. I do not plan to read any more of this series if the author does not seem to care about details.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 29, 2019
Skye continues to do things that don't make sense, mostly because they're the right thing to do - though sometimes because there is alcohol involved. Skye, like many people, does incredibly dumb things when alcohol is involved. This book sees him move from being a valued guest of the tribe, to outcast, to leader.
It continues to be confusing to figure out what to read next. I've decided to stick with the later series for now - so Canyon of Bones is next up for me. I debated between it and Yellowstone, which would likely be the next chronologically - except the chronology concerning Mary and Dirk get really confusing, particularly with those two works.
It continues to be confusing to figure out what to read next. I've decided to stick with the later series for now - so Canyon of Bones is next up for me. I debated between it and Yellowstone, which would likely be the next chronologically - except the chronology concerning Mary and Dirk get really confusing, particularly with those two works.
August 1, 2013
Good frontier/western book as Barnaby Skye and his Indian wife, Many Quill Woman undergo many adventures after she is wounded in a raid by the Crows enemy, the Blackfeet. Eventually they must stop a group of white traders who are selling whiskey to the Indians and cheating them out of their buffalo hides and other goods. Recommended!
February 5, 2009
At times I would say "you idiot" you already did that dumb thing, when will you learn.
April 28, 2013
This book was very good! It was enjoyable and enthralling. It kept me on my toes and it was definitely a page turner! I highly recommend it!
February 13, 2017
Great book. could not stop reading
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews