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Bull has a gift for being at the right place at the right time: her War for the Oaks not only was deservedly popular, but hit the zeitgeist so centrally that the subsequent decade or so was filled with spinoffs in which rock bands use their music magic to fight off the bad Sidhe, or Winter Court of Faerie. At that time (gross generalization here) readers were looking for something besides yet another quest for a magical object through a fantasy landscape, so here was magic and pretty elves brought right to our world, and all tied up with True Thomas, which is still a profoundly effective myth: you don't have to believe in anything, but you can still be sacrificed, or give yourself up for sacrifice, for the greater …what?

In Territory, Bull has taken the gritty, gunslinging west with its edgy co-existence alongside other cultures (Chinese, Mexican, Native American). She added the legendary Earp and Clanton feud. She infuses both with disturbing possibilities outside everyday experience, as newly widowed newspaperwoman Mrs Benjamin meets a strange gunman who just rode into town, trailing whispered speculation about robbery—and radiating unexplained heat. I haven't gotten very far yet, but the vividness of the setting, the fascinating characters whose tension is underscored by the alienness of that territory that was far from being civilized, the deft use of dry, electric heat and its opposite cool, life-giving (and sometimes threatening) water, are slowly adding up to a powerful book.