This was such a good, fun book! It was perfectly paced and perfectly balanced--enough action, enough introspection; enough crackling dialogue, enough genuine character moments. Maggie is a great main character; she's edgy, sad, quick to anger, and she makes sense. Everything about her, even her flaws, make sense within the narrative. She reacts to things the way you'd expect an actual human being to react and I love it so much. She's achingly real but still a kick-ass heroine and her choices--while not always made under the best circumstances or in the best frame of mind--feel organic and natural instead of Mandated by Plot.
Speaking of plot! It's a fascinating world Roanhorse has built! Climatic disasters have wiped away much of the US as we know it but in the ruins of one order, another rises--or rather, rises again. Roanhorse's use of familiar apocalyptic tropes sets a really fascinating and powerful backdrop for the Navajo/Diné nation at the heart of the story. In the ruins of the settlers' US, the Diné and their gods have risen, building a wall to protect their homeland and surviving despite the apocalyspe because, as Roanhorse's characters point out, indigenous people in the Americas have already experienced many apocalypses through the genocidal machinations of white European settlers. The end of one world can allow for the birth of another.
And this exploration of how the apocalypse might seem to a marginalized community is why this book is so important. Not just because it's a good story with good characters and a fun, interesting plot; ownvoices book like Trail of Lightning remind us that when diverse authors tell diverse stories from diverse points of view the genre as a whole is enriched and we're all given the gift of stories we would never have dreamed of. A Diné hero, fighting Diné monsters on Diné land is a triumph of a book and I cannot wait for the sequel!
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Popular Highlights in this book
“Words matter,” he says. “The name you give things, it forms them when you speak. You must always be careful with your words.”Highlighted by 310 Kindle readers- Safe from the outside world, at least. But sometimes the worst monsters are the ones within.Highlighted by 292 Kindle readers
- “Honágháahnii, born for K’aahanáanii.” Only my first two clans, but that’s enough.Highlighted by 201 Kindle readers
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Reviews with images
Trail of Lightning is an electrifying debut novel!!!!
Trail of Lightning is an electrifying debut novel from Roanhorse and I cannot wait to get my hands on what she blesses us with next!Straddling the line of woman and something entirely else is the main character: Maggie aka Maddalena Hoskins. She is an outsider with a specialized skill set: killing the monsters that threaten the peace. She was brought up under the tutelage of an immortal, ancient being named Neizghani, known to the locals as Monster slayer. Maggie is an old soul in a young woman’s body who knows sorrow. She keeps mostly to herself. Her profession as a killer of the monstrous has made her many things: a target, an eye sore, a feared one, and an outcast with few friends or allies to depend on — in fact she could probably count them all on one hand. Just one.The world building that Roanhorse does is one of the best parts of this book: this is a world akin to ours that becomes magnified by Gods and creatures and the awful things they do to serve their interests. I fell in love with just how deeply the extraordinary live among the ordinary — how these more divine beings were everywhere in places where you wouldn’t expect, like a place where you would grab a drink. You just have to have the eyes to see them. Each one we meet, from Maggie’s legendary mentor to the trickster God Coyote, gives us layers to the narrative that add to this wonderful mythology.
Top reviews from other countries
Becky Crook
Fantasy steeped in mythology!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2023fcasa
An apocalyptic introduction to the future Navajo empire
Reviewed in the Netherlands on June 12, 2020JiHache
La post-apocalyptique fantastique que je ne savais pas que je cherchais
Reviewed in France on November 4, 2018