Healer of the Water Monster

By: Brian Young / Narrated By: Shaun Taylor-Corbett

Length: 9 hrs

2-Stars for Valiant Intentions?! …I KNOW…!

Seriously, I gotta work on my Praise Skills…

But it’s like this, see: M’ Sis and I were beYOND tickled pink to find a Middle Grade fiction debut by Somebody Different! Yeh yeh yeh. We’ve got Wagamese, and Erdrich, and Roanhorse, and even >grooooaaan< Alexie (Sigh), but to find a young author? Writing for kids who might be just as he was as a child: A Navajo who could greatly benefit from, and enjoy wildly, a story that straddles the world of their Elders with the world that they also kinda sorta have to live in? Jiminy H. Freakin’ Cricket, what’s not to look forward to, salivating the whole time?!

And then the aTROcious narration started in.

And then the subpar writing took hold, and plot holes GALORE started tripping us up, and elements introduced were not fleshed out.

It didn’t help that narrator Shaun Taylor-Corbett fairly SCREAMED our “hero” Nathan’s lines from the get-go… and throughout the enTIREty of this production of what had the potential to be drop dead awesome.

Young Nathan is off to join his grandma Nali at her mobile home for a couple of months this summer. He saaaays it’s cuz he wants to see her, and that on her land he can conduct a bit of a science project re: seeds, water, growth. But really it’s because newly-divorced dad invited his new girlfriend to Las Vegas, when it was just s’posed to be a Dad/Son bonding time. ImMEDiately, Taylor-Corbett has Nathan as snapping everyone’s heads off. Snide snide snappish snide. C’mon, narrator, give us at least a bitty chance to have some feeling for our hero rather than hoping DESperately a character arc will be written in soon whereby we see growth and don’t wanna throttle him.

Harsh? Oh yes, I was NOT pleased with m’self here, as again: HOPING FOR STELLAR.

So I tried to get past what was turning out to be truly appalling narration as Taylor-Corbett used utter extremes for his choices at vocal characterizations for the multitude of characters, both of this world, and of the spirit Unseen by Grownups world. I instead attempted to shut his voice out to focus on the writing. And initially as author Brian Young introduced his otherworldly characters, I was fascinated and excited, thinking to myself that Native cultures, with suuuuch rich and diverse spirits and characters were the First, the Original, crafters of Magical Realism.

Exciting, what, yessss?

And then Young’s youth and seriously flawed skills took over. Cuz you see, there’s no tension in this book. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Characters are introduced, like returned from combat Uncle Jet, who’s battling PTSD and alcoholism and despair, and even as things are written all fraught-like, we know, despite Nathan’s waffling all over the place, that Nathan will come to the rescue and Save The Day. And don’t eeeeven get me started on the fact that Jet’s narrated as though he’s some kind of sneering, snapping, speedfreak, with strident and hasty as all get-out tones.

When Nathan is called to travel to the Third World, and there are to be Obstacles, Young writes aaaallll of it in such a manner that NEVER are we holding our breath, wondering how he will creatively get through. Because Young has him instantaneously calling to mind just what is needed, and not even at the last moment, but with PLENTY of time so, again, Tension, sir! Tension! And ***spoiler but not really alert*** when all turns out okay, he’s magically transported to save the day for his Uncle Jet, and all suddenly believe that aaaaallll he’s been dancing around, aaaaalllll that they themselves have dismissed as Navajo Nonsense, is completely and unutterably true. They want details, All Of A Sudden Open and now Saved Believers by our young Messiah Nathan.

If you DO Listen to this, and I admit Healer of the Water Monster is compelling as heck (As are the Rave Reviews), stay to the end to listen to the Author’s Note (Wherein Taylor-Corbett displays that he CAN, actually, do something other than shriek) and hear a truly engaging story of Young’s intentions. Based upon ideas and imagery that wouldn’t let go of him, and weaving his own experiences of how climate change, corporate greed, and Monsanto, changed the landscape his grandparents lived in, his Voice is rock solid. THERE! is where ya think to yourself, if you hadn’t just put in 9-hours of Longing To Be Done, a Fine Story In The Making. But he got in his own way, made his hero waffle and snip and snap, made his otherworldly characters suddenly show up conveniently in those Just In The Nick Of Time Moments (Toooo many!), and what is so engaging in the Author’s Note, is clumsily written throughout the entirety of the story.

I applaud his intentions. Jeez, I applaud that he even eXISts and is writing for young Navajo kids like him, but Dang! how I wish he’d shake off some of his MFA indoctrination and would just write the way he speaks!

And OUCH! For the sequel, which I see is due in 2023, oh OUCH! Pleeeeease tell Taylor-Corbett to just Calm The Dickens Down!!! Oh my eeeeeears!!!