Kaatje Heigerman is a pariah amongst her own people, a woman from a community of pacifists, who went to war and then tried to come home again.
When one of the community is killed by something they don’t understand it’s Kaatje the elders turn to for help, charging her with putting a stop to the killing.
But it’s been a long time since she last took up arms in anger, and even with the training and implants she got from the war she soon finds she’s not ready to deal with what’s really going on in the backwoods of Kapra’s Landing.
I bought a signed copy of this book from the author at Bristolcon 2026 and went on to share a couple of very enjoyable panel discussions with her. I must give a shout out to Steven Poore and Julia Kitvaria-Sarene for between them directing me to Naomi and recommending the book.
It is a sci-fi novella – at 124 pages easily consumed in a day’s reading – and with resonances of Stark Holborn’s desolate space-western world of Factus in Ten Low, Martha Wells dangerously different and isolated protagonist Murderbot in Code Red and Harrison Ford’s experiences as a city cop hiding out in an Amish community in Witness.
The cover design nicely captures an aesthetic of Arizona or New Mexico on the colonised planet of Kapra’s Landing. The protagonist’s profession as a cattle rancher accentuates that sense of a western adventure in space. We first meet Kaatje, rifle in hand, hunkering down to protect her herd from predators with the same focus that was demanded of Heath Ledger as Ennis del Mar protecting sheep from coyotes in Brokeback Mountain.
Scott’s worldbuilding seasons that dynamic of a settler people carving out a living for themselves on a new planet with some nice technological uplifts. As has happened throughout human history, the discovery of valuable resources beyond (and beneath) the grazing grounds brought war to Kapra’s Landing as different groups sought to impose their ‘protection’ on a colony that had aspired to independence. It felt something like the 1830s Texan struggle to achieve and maintain independence before accepting the greater protection offered under the United States umbrella.
However, Katje was alone within her immediate pacifist community of Goodwill Town in choosing to take up arms. She has returned changed by the experience, physically and mentally, in ways that isolate her from her religiously minded pacifist peer group, until – that is – trouble comes to Goodwill.
Katje makes a compelling protagonist – not quite an artificial construct like Martha Wells’ secunit, but a powerfully augmented human with adaptations to make her into a deadly sniper or Jager. The reader feels for her predicament isolated from a community who cannot – within their moral code – feel or express gratitude for what she has done on their behalf.
Where Wells brought us deep into Murderbot’s angst ridden psyche through a first person perspective, Scott emphasises Katje’s isolation with the additional distance of third person narration. Third person perspective also gives the reader less certainty that the protagonist must have survived if they are there to tell the story, a significant difference given the lethal scrapes that Katje often finds herself in.
The plot, from the opening stakeout to protect the herd, rattles along at a good pace delivering abrupt step changes in the level of danger. The foes Katje faces are both inventively technological and venally human which makes for a very dangerous mix. Like the Amish in Witness the non-violent mennonite community that Katje strives to protect have little to offer in their own defence still less by way of assistance to Katje beyond the loan of the endearing Ajax the horse. All of which helps to secure reader investment in Katje and her struggles.
Scott’s prose flows smoothly leading the reader through the switchbacks of action and immersing them in scene and setting, for example in the initial stakeout
What wind there was came from in front of her, carrying with it the warm feculent stink of the brontotheres even from a kilometre away. It was a smell she’d grown to appreciate in the decade since she’d settled out here, a smell that somehow belonged to her, as weird as that might sound.
or later in a desperate bid for escape
She hit the water hard enough to drive the air from her lungs and leave her momentarily stunned. The river was a few metres deep but narrow and fast flowing, and before she’d even started rising to the surface she felt the current grab her and pull her along. Fighting the urge to resist she let the water carry her away from where she’d landed…
The novella length and format dictate a fairly tight focused plot rooted in Katje’s perspective, first in the forensic investigation of bodies and crime scenes and then in a quick brutal search for the culprits before even greater harm can be done.
However, the setting and the backstory of the mercenary struggles that shaped Katje and her world are compelling enough to leave one hungry for more tales from a planet nicknamed Struggle and – as the book is subtitled “A Fractured Republic Tale” Scott has clearly left herself room to deliver on that.
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