A near-future quasi-urban fantasy where the titular Coyote takes on fascists in a nearby state
Sometimes, you just need to punch fascists. That’s not quite what Coyote’s job is, but you might call it a happy side benefit. In a near-future broken and remixed North America, Coyote lives in Federal Mexico. Among other odd jobs she does to make a living (including some light thievery), she works to get people and things across the border into, or out of, the breakaway state next door: Neo-Texas, a.k.a. Lindyland. It’s not the most pleasant of neighbors; it’s in fact a straight up fascist state, complete with a blond-haired blue-eyed army of clones. But when Marge, a top flight mechanic, hires Coyote to get across the border and rescue her sister, she realizes that all paths are leading back to Distarritz, a prison facility especially designed for people like Marge’s sister... and for Coyote. For, you see, Coyote isn’t just an ordinary smuggler and border crosser. She is, in fact, a shapeshifter... and once was a prisoner in Distarritz herself.
The story of Coyote and Marge is the story of Coyote Run by Lilith Saintcrow.
Coyote, our protagonist and point of view character, is tough as nails, living close to the border between Federated Mexico and Lindyland. This near-future North America is broken in many ways, but Coyote is holding on by her nails. In the wake of civil wars, plagues, and the emergence (or possibly re-emergence) of real-life shapeshifters into the world, Coyote is, in fact, a shifter of her namesake. She’s a survivor, a scavenger, and mostly a loner. The author has a lot of fun exploring the consequences and nature of shapeshifting in her main character, as well as giving us looks at other shifters in the course of the novel. Coyote does not have a comfortable life, but she’s doing okay. Certainly better than she would over in Lindyland. Shifters like her don’t have it easy anywhere.
Or shifters such as Marge. Saintcrow has another lot of fun with her second protagonist, giving her to us on a plate for us to figure out things about the world, and giving us a puzzle to work on as we follow Coyote’s story. Marge is by nature a character whom the reader can warm to immediately, and over time, the loner and grumpy Coyote can warm up to as well. One could even say that the character arc of this novel is Coyote learning that she doesn’t have to oppose fascists and bedevil Lindyland all on her own.
As opposed to Coyote being a tough loner who punches fascists, Marge is a tinkerer, a builder, a creator. She may not get her hands as dirty as Coyote in fighting fascists directly, but she definitely wants to hurt the fash any way she can. We get an excellent bit of characterization that really establishes her character when, as part of her upfront payment to Coyote for the job of rescuing her sister, she lovingly fixes and repairs to operational status Coyote’s illegally obtained military robot, DONQ-E42 (better known as Chicken).
Saintcrow also gives us a number of interesting secondary characters, ranging from other prisoners at Distarritz that Coyote encounters on her mission to free Marge’s sister, to a pack of werewolves, and of course the Lindyland antagonists. While the fascists are there in the end to be punched, they are detailed and described well enough so that one can visualize, and cheer, when Coyote does what she does best. This is an excellently inhabited and populated world, helping set the table for the setting.
Speaking of which, let’s talk about the worldbuilding, shall we? This is a relatively tight and localized story, taking place in a border town, the badlands across the border and the ferociously evil prisoner camp. But we get dollops of information leavened in, as much as Coyote knows, anyway, about why and how shapeshifters are back or just emerged, as well as the geopolitical situation. It’s a lean and mean worldbuilding—I have no idea what happened in this novel to what was the east half of the United States; it never comes up. We have Lindyland, the Federated Mexico, and mentions of things like Cascadia and Transcanada. On a more grounded level, we have all sorts of speculative worldbuilding on technology in this endless civil war, but it all feels grounded as an extension of the present. This might not be twenty minutes into the future, but it certainly could be two hours.
And I did mention punching fascists? This is a novel that unapologetically puts its politics on its shirt sleeve, and then puts that politics into practice. There appears, having read a bunch of her novels, to be a couple of “gears” to the various kinds of writing Saintcrow has done. You can get the patient slow burn of works such as A Flame in the North, which build like a thunderhead toward their conclusion, with occasional lightning strikes along the way. And then there are her novels which launch hard so the reader simply has to try and hold on.
In Coyote Run, Saintcrow has elected the latter approach. The result is a balls to the wall, pedal beyond the metal and into the next level story that grabs from the word go and does not let up till the finale. The action moves quickly and briskly, only pausing when it needs to for our characters, and the reader, to catch their breath. This is a novel designed for page-turning, fast-paced entertaining reading. This is the kind of book you read on your lunch break and curse when your lunch timer goes off and you have to clock back to your job, because you are having too much damned fun reading it.
And that is where the book lands for me. This is an intensely fun, kinetic, potent read where fascists are there to be opposed and punched. Or sometimes run over. Or shot. You get the picture. Is it a crazy and dangerous plan that Coyote has, with danger and high stakes? You bet. Are you cheering for Coyote and Marge the whole way? Absolutely yes. As an early book out of the gate for Kevin Hearne’s Horned Lark Press, Lilith Saintcrow’s Coyote Run starts off with a crowd-pleasing bang. Come for the punching fascists, stay for the strong characterization, rich worldbuilding and intense action beats.
Highlights:
- Punching fascists for fun and profit.
- Excellent pair of main characters
- Fun and kinetic writing keep the pages turning.
Reference: Saintcrow, Lilith. Coyote Run [Horned Lark Press, 2025].
POSTED BY: Paul Weimer. Ubiquitous in Shadow, but I'm just this guy, you know? @princejvstin.
