If you've been reading The Elemental Masters series for a while, chances are you've already read From A High Tower. If you start reading this book and think, "Hmm... This seems awfully familiar," you would be correct. The setting is certainly recycled, and a good portion of the plot is too. The addition of real-life sharpshooters Annie Oakley and her husband Frank Butler is new. Even with them and a few new plot points, the book still feels fairly stale.

To make matters worse, apparently Mercedes Lackey was originally going to use the main character from From A High Tower, Giselle, but later on changed her mind and renamed the character Frida. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that change registered on all rungs of the publishing ladder, because the book's summary still has the name of Giselle on the book jacket... I was pretty confused for a while until I looked to Goodreads and discovered that other readers had the same experience. I was expecting The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley to be either a sequel or continuation of From A High Tower and instead got a reshaped version taking place slightly later in history.

The outcome was that I was mostly bored with this book. Plus, I don't love when Lackey introduces other established characters, whether they're actual historical figures (such as Annie Oakley and Frank Butler) or another author's invention (such as Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.) Trying to situate well-known characters into a world of her own devising seems forced and in the case of this book, a little uncomfortable. Lackey suggests that the reason Annie never had children with Frank is because the He-Wolf cursed her by attaching her fertility to him alone. Ick-factor aside, it seems presumptuous to explain away a historical figure's lack of offspring when it's not well-known whether she chose not to have children or physically could not have them.

I'm torn at this point. As I've mentioned in reviews of this series in recent years, I've been enjoying the books less with each installment. I'm definitely still glad Lackey's moved away from the Sarah and Nan storylines, and Jolene was a step in the right direction, but now it feels like with this book, that momentum has stalled again. I'm hoping for better, but I think I need to reread an old favorite like The Gates of Sleep to help me remember exactly what it is that these recent books are missing. ( )

The latest in the Elemental Masters series has its focus on Annie Oakley when the show was in Germany. Annie and her husband at the beginning of the book find out they have magic when a new act is brought in and Wild Bill wants them to meet the couple behind the act and approve of them joining since they are also trick shooters. There is Annie’s poor upbringing brought up by way of discussions of her nightmares and her binding of her fertility by a werewolf when she was a child sent to a workhouse. All of this comes to matter to the story as it Annie works with Frieda to learn magic. Frieda works with Air magic for her trick shots and also uses her magic to hunt evil creatures in Germany’s lands with other magicians. Annie and her husband join them on other hunts during the cold winter months when the show is closed down. When it does warm up there is a rush to get them tested for their mastery and safely back to America as Annie can feel something out there coming for her.

Digital review copy provided by the publisher through Edelweiss
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This a thin and not particularly interesting entry into this now struggling series ( )

This re-imagining of Annie Oakley in the fantasy world of Elemental Master's is really short on plot and quite predictable, but it's a decent read and moves at a sprightly pace as Annie and husband Frank are introduced to their potential as elemental magicians and are helped out and help out the Strasbourg loge while they are in winter quarters of the Wild West show. ( )

Good story, interesting addition to the Elemental Mages series...but not a favorite. I preferred Frieda's stories, though it was nice to see her again. And I spent quite a bit of time wondering how much of this was fact and how much was the story - Annie was real, of course; there was a tour of Europe, and the organization of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show is something I've seen mentioned elsewhere. But were there Lipizzaners in the show? Did Annie stay in a Graf's home one winter? Was her relationship with her husband _quite_ as perfect as it is here? And what about the childhood events - how much of those were fact? This sort of thing kept distracting me from the story. So - fun, and worth reading, but not one of the best. ( )