Rebecca Roanhorse: Trail of Lightning
Sep. 11th, 2018 03:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaI’ve been waiting excitedly for the publication of Rebecca Roanhorse’s novel Trail of Lightning ever since I heard she was writing it. Because based just on the one short story of hers that I’ve read - the one that won this year’s Hugo Award - I knew that I was going to be totally swept up in anything she wanted to write.
And I was totally correct in that.
Trail of Lightning is truly kickass fantasy - think urban fantasy but not in a city, with a troubled female monsterhunter and a serious monster to hunt - that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where the Navajo Nation, or Dinétah, is now an autonomous region, separated from what remains of a North America ravaged by rising waters and ecological disasters by a wall raised by traditional powers. It’s no paradise - life is hard, technology is rundown and cobbled together, the economic system has reverted to barter, and there are ancient creatures of evil lurking in the hinterlands, and not all power workers have good intentions.
Maggie Hoskie was once almost killed by a monster. She was saved by Neizghání, a legendary, immortal monsterslayer, who took her on as his apprentice, in part because with the wounds she took from the monster, darkness entered her spirit, and only training and discipline could keep her from becoming a monster herself. But he came to mistrust her ability to resist, and stopped teaching her, leaving her alone, mostly trained, with clan powers that enhance her strength and speed, and doubting herself.
Part of her wants to stay away from monsterhunting, without the support of her mentor, but when a family calls for her to find, and save if she can, their daughter, taken by monsters, she does what she can.
The creature is unlike anything she’s encountered before, but with the help of Tah, a medicine man who is like a father to her, and his grandson Kai, she discovers that it’s a magical construct, which means there’s a witch operating in Dinétah, and she sets out with Kai to hunt them down.
The story is complex, with many twists, and unreliable characters who are telling layers on layers of untruths - after sll, Coyote is one of the characters, and you can never trust Coyote. It is steeped in Diné traditions, and - content notice here - brutal in many places. Maggie and Kai and the other humans in this story live in a brutal time, after the end of the world, when all the monsters that were kept in dreamtime have come to life. It’s a very different vision from most post-apocalyptic fantasies I’ve read, and it is absolutely enthralling. Fast-paced, action-filled. And Maggie Hoskie is as real as anyone I’ve ever read about.
I am certain of one thing - the next book is going to be a blast.
And I was totally correct in that.
Trail of Lightning is truly kickass fantasy - think urban fantasy but not in a city, with a troubled female monsterhunter and a serious monster to hunt - that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where the Navajo Nation, or Dinétah, is now an autonomous region, separated from what remains of a North America ravaged by rising waters and ecological disasters by a wall raised by traditional powers. It’s no paradise - life is hard, technology is rundown and cobbled together, the economic system has reverted to barter, and there are ancient creatures of evil lurking in the hinterlands, and not all power workers have good intentions.
Maggie Hoskie was once almost killed by a monster. She was saved by Neizghání, a legendary, immortal monsterslayer, who took her on as his apprentice, in part because with the wounds she took from the monster, darkness entered her spirit, and only training and discipline could keep her from becoming a monster herself. But he came to mistrust her ability to resist, and stopped teaching her, leaving her alone, mostly trained, with clan powers that enhance her strength and speed, and doubting herself.
Part of her wants to stay away from monsterhunting, without the support of her mentor, but when a family calls for her to find, and save if she can, their daughter, taken by monsters, she does what she can.
The creature is unlike anything she’s encountered before, but with the help of Tah, a medicine man who is like a father to her, and his grandson Kai, she discovers that it’s a magical construct, which means there’s a witch operating in Dinétah, and she sets out with Kai to hunt them down.
The story is complex, with many twists, and unreliable characters who are telling layers on layers of untruths - after sll, Coyote is one of the characters, and you can never trust Coyote. It is steeped in Diné traditions, and - content notice here - brutal in many places. Maggie and Kai and the other humans in this story live in a brutal time, after the end of the world, when all the monsters that were kept in dreamtime have come to life. It’s a very different vision from most post-apocalyptic fantasies I’ve read, and it is absolutely enthralling. Fast-paced, action-filled. And Maggie Hoskie is as real as anyone I’ve ever read about.
I am certain of one thing - the next book is going to be a blast.