Aurélie Wellenstein and the Wild West of Monsters – Libération

With “the Harper of the Red Lands”, the French novelist creates a fascinating universe, mixing the codes of fantasy with those of the western.

A woman with the head of a harp. A dance show that turns into circus games. Music as an instrument of torture… The opening scene of the Harper of the Red Lands grabs us immediately. In a few pages, Aurélie Wellenstein's pen bewitches and opens the doors to a rich world.

Nacarat is a kind of Far West, a large, glowing territory that attracts settlers in search of fortune and adventure. But these lands are populated by monsters with supernatural powers, and the best way to face them is to have a piece of one of them grafted to you. Bounty hunters therefore strive to kill them in large numbers and surgeons are not always scrupulous in carrying out the operations. Problem: these transplants give the person who undergoes them a power corresponding to that of the animal, but also a heavy price to pay, a “weakness” which can handicap them.

Abraham is 20 years old. His brother Jarod was captured by the harpist and he doesn't know if he is still alive. He decides to find him, becoming one of the few to roam Nacarat in search of something other than fortune. To penetrate these unknown lands and reach Symphony, the place over which the harpist reigns, he joins forces with a group of mercenaries who, all, have been transplanted while he is not. The novel will then slow down its pace. Wellenstein takes the time to become attached to his characters, to reveal their history, their complexes, their traumas. The links evolve,