Trail of Lightning

TRAIL OF LIGHTING is a bright light in my reading life, a book with urban fantasy feels but nary a city in sight. Maggie is conflicted and messy, with a supernatural ability to bring death (helped by her gun and very large knife) and not much help reconciling that with the rest of herself. 

It's about legacies of trauma and the nature of monstrosity, as Maggie grapples with her understanding of herself. Is she a person who kills monsters? Or a monster who's trying to take other monsters down with her/ Part of this is shown early on when she deliberately withholds her expected part of a culturally important greeting, not wanting to show this part of herself to people she is technically in community with. She feels alienated from them by her deeds. Complicating this is the fact that she's useful to them for the very thing that makes them feel uncomfortable around her, i.e. her talent for death which she uses for monster hunting and retribution.

I love the worldbuilding and setting, blending real climate change fears with Indigenous (specifically Diné) mythology to create a new world from the remains of our own. Some things are directly explained, especially if they relate to her personal history or the particular quirks of this particular dystopian existence, but a lot of specific definitions are left to context clues. 

I enjoyed this portrayal of Coyote, Maggie's interactions with him are interestingly tense. I like Kai, he seems like a good counterbalance for Maggie. My few complaints about him have excellent in-story justifications which come together in the end and turn them from annoying to appropriately mysteriously and foreshadow-y. 

The big reveal is excellent, I'm very pleased by that part of the ending. This was great and I'm excited for the next one!

Unexpectedly complex and engrossing. Enjoyable, too. Roanhorse has a gift for dialogue - not profound, just banter that somehow communicates a lot of heart. Her characters are just a smidgen over the top — too kind, too conflicted, too evil — and her story development a little too convenient; and I was totally okay with all of it. There's real-life pain here: shame, guilt, uncertainty, fear, grit, deceit, pain, with small and large kindnesses all throughout.

My favorite aspect, and this is only a mild spoiler: Coyote. He was... refreshingly unpredictable. Coyote is often painted as evil or mischievous but still somehow recognizable to a human; Roanhorse's Coyote is what I've always envisioned: chaotic neutral. Motivations that make no sense, that cannot be understood by a mere human mind. Just when you think you have him pegged, nope, you don't, and I love that. It's a reminder that Coyote is all around us every day; that our only way to deal with uncertainty is to roll with it.

Many close-second favorite aspects: Roanhorse's love for and portrayal of Diné culture; her love of human beings, flawed as we are; her understanding of loneliness, her compassion for those who suffer alone.

Trail of Lightning came onto my TBR list via Rich in Color's review. In general, it was getting a lot of favorable press, and I saw it on other suggested reading lists, though I don't have those at hand.

It is important to note that after reading such favorable press, I also became aware of people within the Native community who had some concerns about Trail of Lightning. Anybody who is going to read this book should also read about these concerns. As a conscientious reader, it is important to keep this in mind.

It could be because I was aware of both super favorable reviews and press as well as people in the author's and subject's community have concerns, but the book had a bit of a slow start for me. There was a bunch of world-building that is well done, but also not masked quite well enough. For a debut novel, it's an excellent effort. About 60% into the book is when it picked up to the point where I didn't want to put the book down.

I also had some issues enjoying the character of Coyote because I've been reading the Mercy Thompson books for over a decade. Coyote is essentially the same character in both novels because they are based on the same folklore and neither character is presented far from that folklore. At least, until they aren't the same anymore, which is pretty far into Trail of Lightning. Of course, this says more about the way I was reading than the presentation of the character.

The last drawback of this novel that keeps it from being 5 stars is that silly main characters bother me. Unfortunately, Maggie's behavior is silly and a caricature sometimes, rather than believable for me. Roanhorse tried very hard to describe Maggie's demons without getting too specific. Once you get too specific, people can dismiss it as "not being bad enough." However there were a couple scenes where Maggie's trust issues are unfounded and she goes off on a wild tangent that is not held up by previous behavior and presented demons in the book. There's also the bit of an "unlikable" main character. This seems to be a fairly recent trend in stories - possibly the same trend as many people didn't find Katniss likable from the Hunger Games. I had a hard time liking Maggie, and maybe I wasn't meant to. But I also don't know how I'm supposed to understand her actions at both the beginning of the book and the very end of the book if I don't like her.

However, even with those drawbacks, this is a really good book that deserved all the accolades it received. It was sold to me as YA, but a friend who rated it her best book of 2018 said she wouldn't necessarily place it as YA. I agree, it is solidly in the urban fantasy genre.

I look forward to reading the next book in this series.

I've been excitedly waiting for this debut novel ever since I read Rebecca Roanhorse's story, Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience.The book did not disappoint.When most of the world flooded, the elders raised a magical wall around Diné land.  The gods and mythological beings are back.  Some people are manifesting clan powers.  Maggie's clan powers make her a powerful monster killer.  She was taken in and trained by a mythological warrior after a tragedy until he left her a year ago.  Now she is a deeply emotionally damaged monster hunter for hire.Now she is on the trail of monsters that she has never seen before.  They are wiping out whole towns.This book reminds me a lot of the early seasons of the TV show Supernatural, if the lead was a no-nonsense Diné woman driving a 1972 pickup.  There are different groups of monster hunters.  There is even a safe house/bar/weapons depot/first aid station run by a older black woman and her children.I loved a scene in a nightclub where Maggie is able to see the patrons as embodiments of their clan powers.  That is the type of imagination that I love to see in books.The ending is magnificent and just a little bit of a cliffhanger.  I'm looking forward to the next book in 2019.(There is a lot of graphic violence depicted including violence against children so if that bothers you a lot you might want to skip this one.)This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story