Trail of Lightning
Series: The Sixth World, Book 1
By: Rebecca Roanhorse / Narrated By: Tanis Parenteau
Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
What a reFRESHing and fun jaunt, jam-packed with action, mythology, and characters to root for!
Just gotta say it: Rebecca Roanhorse had me when her heroine Maggie saws a little girl’s head off…
That says a lot for how fearless and free her style of writing is and how tough and pragmatic her heroine is. Maggie knows she’ll take a psychological hit for killing the girl, but there’s a reason she neeeeds to get it done. She’s living in a post apocalyptic Navajo environment (Climate catastrophe and human depredation, anyone?), and she’s a supernatural monster hunter/killer extraordinaire. She knows evil, and she knows what she has to do.
The monster in this case, however, is unlike any she’s ever seen before, so she has to tap into her in-the-spirit-grandfather’s knowledge to understand just what she’s up against: Cuz this monster? He ain’t the only one around. Tah, the old man, says she’ll need help as she tries to stomp out this latest evil, and he thrusts his grandson, Kai, upon her.
Sure, sure, a few other reviewers griped that she muses on her love life a bit, what with Kai being thrown in there and NATurally developing into a love interest, but let’s remember that this is Book One, and characters and relationships are being developed. Plus, Maggie is sooo refreshing in that she’s a tough cookie with walls she’s thrown up, but she’s written in such a way where her vulnerabilities don’t make her some obnoxious jerk who forces people to beg her for a chance even as she treats them like dirt (Say like Ollie from The Insides?). I liked how she’d feel fear every time her lonely existence was threatened with intimacy, but she was open to it without being wretched. I liked Maggie.
And I liked Trail of Lightning a LOT. This was my favorite Listen of the week. It had phenomenal world building, a really, really neat magic system based on Navajo mythology, and while it might be nice to know a bit about Navajo culture going in, it wasn’t absolutely necessary. I mean, we’ve all heard about that trickster god Coyote, right? We can imagine what all sorts of mischief and conniving he’s gonna get up to. And we all know there’s going to be a special affinity and awareness of the environment and natural phenomena.
Tanis Parenteau does a very good job with the narration, and my only problem was with her portrayal of some harsh and grating men/characters. Her voice gets super gravelly for those people, and it skritched on my ears like nails on chalkboard. Fortunately, it would appear that that was only the way she started sentences off—Her voice appeared incapable of keeping up the rigors of such vocal shapings, thank GOD. Otherwise I think I would’ve died because truly! There are some twisted menfolk and monsters whose voices required scratchiness.
There are twists and turns and, while the characters do seem to react more than take actions that depicted personal agency, I felt the situations they got into were such that this was all quite appropriate. It certainly doesn’t deter me in any way from having a hankering to take on the second in the series. Because even tho’ this is an action-packed novel, character development doesn’t take a backseat to anything, and it ended on a lovely and touching note. Enough for my emotional heartstrings to be set humming.
So who knows? I may just HAVE to sneeeak in that next book into this short Native American Heritage Month. But you know what? A good book is just a good book, and it needn’t be classified as NAHM material.
And this is just a good and fun book!
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