Trail of lightning

Review by New York Times Review

These heart-hammering thrillers take readers to some very dark places. SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY thrillers are often seen as frivolous, action-packed page turners, as critically dismissed as they are compulsively consumed. But a fast pace is more than a generic quality; speed today deserves attention as a subject in its own right, whether in the propagation of misinformation through social networks, the opaque and instantaneous transfers of capital into cryptocurrencies and tax havens or the cataclysmic changes in our climate. The acceleration at the hearts of these vast structures and systems is outpacing our ability to discuss and constrain their effects on us - so here are some books that work hard to catch up. CLAIRE NORTH'S 84K (Orbit, paper, $15.99) IS a VICIOUS, engrossing portrait of unregulated capitalism carried to its logical conclusion. In a near-future Britain, human rights have been abolished; people are only as important as their worth to the Company that runs the government. People convicted of crimes, no matter how heinous, are fined; failure to pay sends them to "the patty line," where they work in indentured servitude until they've settled their debt to society. Functionally, what this means is that the wealthy can do whatever they please while more and more people are forced into work camps, especially as it's cheaper for the Company to employ those who've been convicted of crimes than those who haven't. Theo Miller is an adjuster employed by the Criminal Audit Office. His job is to determine the value of human lives and the indemnity owed for any given crime. But Theo - a milquetoast, middle-class middleman - isn't entirely what he seems: His name and history are a lie. When Dani Cumali, a woman from his secret past, turns up threatening to expose him, he grudgingly helps her - until he finds her dead, her assassin casually phoning in the murder in order to pay the indemnity. From that point on, Theo takes up Dani's struggle to reveal the depth and breadth of the Company's evil. "84K" is a mixed bag. On the one hand, it's a terrifying look at capitalism's slippery slopes and a realistic depiction of how a person's will can shrivel into apathy and fear. On the other, it's not an easy reading experience. This may be intentional on North's part as a sort of structural storytelling: Capitalism is vague and diffuse, so why shouldn't the narration follow suit? North has used carriage returns as punctuation in other novels, but usually for mechanical reasons, like indicating a body swap; in "84K," random line breaks combine with almost constant ellipses to lend the novel a distracted air, where no one seems able to carry a thought to its conclusion. This is a deliberate stylistic choice - but it's also exasperating, even allowing for the fact that Theo is meant to be an exasperating character, an Everyman whose motivations are arbitrary and haphazard. That aside, "84K" is absorbing and timely; a book to wrestle and argue with, but first and foremost, to read. NICOLA GRIFFITH'S SO LUCKY (MCDX FSG Originals, paper, $ 15) is a compact, brutal story of losing power and creating community, fast-paced as a punch in the face. Mara Tagarelli, director of the Georgia AIDS Partnership, is used to fighting her way to victory on others' behalf - but shortly after separating from her wife of 14 years, she loses her job and learns she has multiple sclerosis. Finding few resources available to people with M.S., Mara sets out to create them. But as she navigates the disease's effect on her life, job and relationships, she grows aware of a shadowy, grinning thing stalking her peripheral vision - and becomes certain that a string of murders and home invasions is targeting the community she's building. "So Lucky" is beautifully written, with a flexible, efficient precision that embodies the protagonist's voice and character. Like "84K," it draws attention to people on society's margins and the behavior of those who think ignoring misfortune will prevent it from happening to them. But unlike "84K," where the prevailing tone is helplessness and cautionary horror, "So Lucky" is a shot of angry adrenaline. It's also welcome and wonderful to see a book that shows queer women dealing with the aftermath of divorce and the tangled difficulties of turning deep friendship into long-distance romance. And Mara is frequently terrible, which I appreciated more than I can easily say. I'm hungry for depictions of women who make bad decisions and wrestle with the consequences, who shed prejudice and learn compassion, who are more than aspirational figureheads. i loved the protagonist of Rebecca Roanhorse's trail of lightning (Saga, paper, $16.99) for similar reasons. Maggie Hoskie inhabits a world only a few years in our future, where energy wars have culminated in a cataclysmic flooding called the Big Water, and the Navajo reservation has saved itself with supernatural help, sprouting enormous walls of white shell, turquoise, abalone and jet around its borders. Within them, the reservation has become the nation of Dinétah - but while the worst of the apocalypse has been kept out, Dinétah has its own problems. The Big Water has ushered in the Sixth World, and with it, all the spirits and monsters that used to inhabit people's dreams. Maggie is a monster hunter who emerges from isolation to help find a missing girl - but the creature that stole her is rooted in parts of Maggie's past she'd rather not confront. Since Maggie needs help investigating this new threat, her adopted grandfather suggests she work with his smooth-talking grandson Kai. Short on friends and long on enemies, Maggie lets him tag along. Maggie is brusque and antisocial, and she carries her own weight in pain and doubt; the interplay between her and sunny Kai is delightful. I loved the world-building, too: After decades of reading genre futures in which black and brown people don't exist, it's deeply satisfying to find fiction in which histories of genocide actually equip them to survive disasters. As Maggie observes: "The Diné had already suffered their apocalypse over a century before. This wasn't our end. This was our rebirth." But problems of plot and motivation nagged me throughout. In the book's opening encounter, Maggie takes grotesque action on a flawed premise - but that first action is never revisited or questioned once Maggie learns better. Nor was the plot's resolution as satisfying as it could have been, though it neatly sets up a sequel. Ultimately, "Trail of Lightning" made me want nothing so much as a television show. Someone please cancel "Supernatural" already and give us at least five seasons of this badass indigenous monster-hunter and her silver-tongued sidekick. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to the next volume. in a setting that could be a prequel to "Trail of Lightning," Eliot Peper's BANDWIDTH (47North, $24.95) is a thoughtful meditation on the ethics of power among those who broker it. Not far in our future, San Diego is a perpetually burning wasteland, the Arctic has melted and Dag Calhoun, a partner at a lobbying firm called Apex Group, helps rich people get richer from catastrophe. But while working on behalf of Commonwealth, a company that provides internet to most of the planet, Dag is recruited by a secret organization called the Island. Their ability to hack into people's feeds - the augmented reality through which everyone experiences the world - grants them unprecedented powers of surveillance and persuasion. But while Dag's in the business of breaking the world, the Island's in the business of saving it - and they want Dag to be their double agent. "Bandwidth" is a book that savors everything: Dag dwells as much in the scents and tastes of coffee and tequila as he does in philosophical problems of means justifying ends and the limits of ethical persuasion. Peper manages a great deal of complexity without sacrificing clarity or pace, and I read it all in a single fascinated sitting. That said, the book gives me pause where its women are concerned. A portion of the plot hinges on the premise that one's sexual predilections can be deliberately and artificially curated, and while I could see the effort made to embed that premise in the novel's context, it still left a bad taste in my mouth; similar logic underpins rhetoric about "turning people gay" or "curing" homosexuality. Still, the depth and vulnerability of Dag's perspective, his loneliness and the value he places on his few real friendships, kept "Bandwidth" feeling real and urgent. In an afterword, Peper observes that "in an age of acceleration, contemplation is power." It's a good note on which to end - perhaps with an exhortation to digital readers to seek this column in print, where you can linger and contemplate to your heart's content. amal EL-MOHTAR won the Nebula, Locus and Hugo awards for her short story "Seasons of Glass and Iron." Her novella "This Is How You Lose the Time War," written with Max Gladstone, will be published in 2019.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 17, 2018]

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Review by Booklist Review

It is the near future, and a cataclysmic flood has drowned two thirds of the planet. The bulk of the remaining land is the Dinétah, home of the Navajo (known among themselves as the Diné). When the Big Water rose up, so did the gods and monsters of the old stories, who now roam freely through Dinétah alongside clans, families, and gangs. Maggie Hoskie is a monster hunter, trained and then abandoned by the immortal Neizghání. She hunts alone, tormented by her painful past, believing she is almost a monster herself. When a different type of creature begins appearing, Maggie knows she must find its source before it puts the Diné at risk. She reluctantly teams up with an enigmatic medicine man to face down the witch behind it all. Roanhorse is an exciting new voice in speculative fiction, and her depictions of Navajo legends and culture make for a fascinating read. This cross between Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Mad Max: Fury Road will leave readers wanting to know what Maggie does in the next series installment.--Platt, Diana Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Roanhorse vividly depicts Navajo land, legends, and culture in her marvelous fantasy debut, which launches the Sixth World series. After a cataclysm flooded much of the earth, the Dinétah-the homeland of the Navajo, or Diné-was one of the few remaining areas where people could survive. Legendary powers have risen among the Diné, and Maggie Hoskie is one of those who wield them. She was trained by a supernatural mentor to hunt monsters, and after vicious creatures commit a series of grisly murders, she has to muster all her skills to confront the incredibly powerful witch creating them. Roanhorse unspools a fascinating narrative of colorful magic in a world made otherwise bleak by both natural and man-made circumstances. The monster-hunting plot nearly takes a back seat to Maggie's challenging journey of working through personal and cultural trauma, including the violent deaths of loved ones and an abusive relationship. Her partner, Kai, is a force for healing despite, or because of, his own history of pain. Their story is a fresh take on the tale of the emotionally and spiritually wounded hero who faces down increasing evil to make the world better. This rich tale from a strong Native American voice is recommended for all fantasy audiences. Agent: Sara Megibow, KT Literary. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In the wake of a watery apocalypse that leaves much of the once United States-and the world-underwater, the Dinétah (formerly the Navajo nation) have risen as the dominant group. At least among humankind, for gods and monsters walk the remaining land. -Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, trained but also cast off by the famed Neizghání. Her latest search for a missing girl opens up a larger, more frightening discovery of dark magic at work. Reluctantly pairing up with Kai Arviso, a strange medicine man with secrets of his own, Maggie relies on clues from old legends and trading favors with tricksters to find the truth behind recent killings, which might reveal her troubled past and destroy her future. Roanhorse's sharp prose vividly builds a reborn Navajo universe filled with magic and flawed protagonists who are striving to live beyond their presumed destinies. VERDICT This exciting postapocalyptic debut, with its heady combination of smartly drawn characters, Wild West feel, and twisty plot, is a must-read for fantasy enthusiasts. [See Prepub Alert, 12/11/17.]-Kristi Chadwick, Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by School Library Journal Review

The earth has fallen into postapocalyptic chaos and catastrophe. Floods have taken the lives of millions of people, and monsters, created by witches, seek human flesh. Maggie, also known as "The Monster Hunter," is gifted with supernatural powers of speed and assassination through her Native American clan power, or "K'aahanaánii." Maggie is strong and skilled but plagued by past love and loss. She sets out to uncover clues about the newly ruthless monsters that have been taking over the land. Along the way, she hesitantly accepts the help of a medicine man, Kai. Together they collect clues and discover what they least expect. Maggie has to confront her past head-on in order to survive-no easy task. With intriguing and mysterious characters, this series opener will keep readers wondering. VERDICT Purchase this original and thrilling spin on the postapocalyptic genre everywhere speculative fiction is popular.-Amanda LeMay, Neptune Township Public Library, NJ © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

After the Big Water, Maggie Hoskie's monster-slaying clan powers have woken up. She's going to need them on a journey culminating in the kind of battle fantasy readers will relish. In Roanhorse's hard-hitting debut novel, most of the world has perished, and Dintah (the Navajo Nation) has risen. A wall has been built to keep the Din safe from what remains, but little can keep them safe from the monsters that have woken up inside those borders and the witches who work to destroy what life is left. Little except Maggie, whose grandmother was murdered in front of her, who was abandoned by the god Neizghn, who'd saved her. Maggie has been left to hunt monsters alone, hoping for the return of the god she loved like a father and wanted as a lover. In walks the troublingly sexy Kai, whom she reluctantly takes along to hunt monsters and who has medicine big enough to perhaps heal the Earth from the Big Water. As her quest grows, Maggie and Kai battle immortals and mortals alike, and Maggie ends up wondering whom to trust. Propelled by the Coyote god Ma'ii, Maggie confronts her past, her love, and her own power in a war where the stakes are higher than she ever imagined.Roanhorse, the first Indigenous American to win a Nebula and a finalist for a Hugo, has given us a sharp, wonderfully dreamy, action-driven novel. Here's hoping that the next two in this trilogy will deliver more heart-racing, heart-rending prose. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Trail of Lightning Chapter 1 The monster has been here. I can smell him. His stench is part the acrid sweat of exertion, part the meaty ripeness of a carnivore's unwashed flesh, and part something else I can't quite name. It fouls the evening air, stretching beyond smell to something deeper, more base. It unsettles me, sets my own instincts howling in warning. Cold sweat breaks out across my forehead. I wipe it away with the back of my hand. I can also smell the child he's stolen. Her scent is lighter, cleaner. Innocent. She smells alive to me, or at least she was alive when she left here. By now she could smell quite different. The door to the Lukachukai Chapter House swings open. A woman, likely the child's mother, sits stone-faced in an old dented metal folding chair at the front of the small meeting room. She's flanked by a middle-aged man in a Silver Belly cowboy hat and a teenage boy in army fatigues who looks a few years younger than me. The boy holds the woman's hand and murmurs in her ear. Most of the town of Lukachukai is here too. For support or for curiosity or because they are drawn to the spectacle of grief. They huddle in groups of two or three, hunched in morose clumps on the same battered gray chairs, breathing in stale air made worse by the bolted-up windows and the suffocating feel of too many people in too small a space. They are all locals, Navajos, or Diné as we call ourselves, whose ancestors have lived at the foothills of the Chuska Mountains for more generations than the bilagáanas have lived on this continent, who can still tell stories of relatives broken and murdered on the Long Walk or in Indian boarding schools like it was last year, who have likely never traveled off the reservation, even back when it was just a forgotten backwater ward of the United States and not Dinétah risen like it is today. These Diné know the old stories sung by the hataałii, the ancient legends of monsters and the heroes who slew them, even before the monsters rose up out of legend to steal village children from their beds. And now they are looking to me to be their hero. But I'm no hero. I'm more of a last resort, a scorched-earth policy. I'm the person you hire when the heroes have already come home in body bags. My moccasins make no noise as I cross the cracked tile floor to stand in front of the mother. Whispered conversations hush in my wake and heads turn to stare. My reputation obviously precedes me, and not all of the looks are friendly. A group of boys who must be the teenage boy's friends loiter along the far wall. They snicker loudly, eyes following me, and no one bothers to shush them. I ignore them and tell myself I don't care. That I'm here to do a job and get paid, and what Lukachukai thinks of me beyond that doesn't matter. But I've always been a terrible liar. The mother has only one question for me. "Can you save her?" Can I? That's the real question, isn't it? What good are my skills, my clan powers, if I can't save her? "I can find her," I say. And I can, no doubt. But saving and finding are two different things. The mother seems to sense that, and she shuts her eyes and turns away from me. With a clearing of his throat, the man in the cowboy hat pushes himself up from his chair. He's wearing old faded Levi's that probably fit ten years ago but now shrink back to leave his belly protruding over his belt buckle. A similarly ill-fitting cowboy shirt covers his aging paunch, and the look he gives me through bloodshot eyes tells me he's already in mourning. That maybe he doesn't believe much in saving either. He introduces the mother, the boy, and then himself. First and last name, and then clans, like you're supposed to. He's the missing girl's uncle, the boy is her brother. They are all Begays, a last name as common here as Smith is to the bilagáanas. But his clans, the ancestral relations that make him Diné and decide our kinship obligations, are unfamiliar to me. He pauses, waiting for me to give my name and clans so he and the others can place me in their little world, decide our relations and what k'é they might owe me. And what k'é I owe them. But I don't oblige him. I've never been much for tradition, and it's better all around if we just stay strangers. Finally, the older Begay nods, understanding I'm not inclined toward proper Diné etiquette, and gestures to the cloth bag at his feet. "This is all we have for trade," he says. His hands tremble as he speaks, which makes me think he's as bad a liar as I am, but he raises his chin defiantly, eyes wide under the brim of his hat. I step forward and crouch to look through the bag, doing the quick math in my head. The silver jewelry is nice--beads, old stampworked bracelets, a few small squash blossoms--even if the turquoise is sort of junk, missing the spidery veins that make the rocks worth big trade. I can exchange the silver for goods at the markets in Tse Bonito, but the turquoise is useless, no more than pretty blue stones. "The turquoise is shit," I tell him. A loud grunt and the brother pushes his chair back. The metal feet screech across the tile in protest. He makes a show of crossing his arms in disgust. I ignore him and look back at the uncle. "Maybe you should find someone else. Law Dogs or Thirsty Boys." He shakes his head, his moment of bravado leaking away under the weight of limited options. "We tried. Nobody came. We wouldn't have sent a runner if we weren't . . ." Desperate. He doesn't have to say it. I get it. The runner was a kid on a motorbike. Short and squat, so runner was a bit of a misnomer, but he wore a pair of ancient Nikes, duct tape wrapped carefully thick around the toe and reinforcing the seam at the heel, so what do I know? He sat in my yard with the bike's motor idling loudly, making my dogs bark. I came to the door to tell him to go the hell away. That I wasn't in the monster-hunting business anymore. But he told me Lukachukai needed help and nobody else would come and there was a little girl and besides they were paying. I said it wasn't my problem, but the kid was persistent, and the truth was I was interested. All I'd been doing the past nine months was staring at the walls of my trailer, so what else did I have to do? Plus, I was getting low on funds and could use the trade. So when the kid refused to leave, I decided I'd go to Lukachukai. But now I'm starting to regret it. I'd forgotten in my months of self-imposed isolation how much I hate a crowd, and how much a crowd hates me. The uncle spreads his hands, eyes begging where words fail. "I thought, maybe once you saw . . ." And I do see. But I figure the Begays are holding out. Maybe they don't want to pay because I'm a woman. Maybe because I'm not Him. "This is bullshit," the brother says loudly, and his challenge sends a nervous titter rippling through the gathering. "What can she do that we can't do?" He gestures to encompass his posse of friends along the wall. "Clan powers? She won't even tell us what her clans are. And Neizghání's apprentice? We only have her word for it." At the mention of Neizghání's name my heart speeds up and I can't breathe past the knot in my throat. But I force myself to swallow down the familiar hurt, the ache of abandonment. The pathetic flutter of desire. I haven't been Neizghání's anything for a long while now. "Not just her word," the uncle says. "Everyone says it." "Everyone? Everyone says she's not right. That she's wrong, Navajo way. That's what everyone says." A general burst of murmuring through the crowd, comparing notes on my wrongness, no doubt. But the uncle quiets them down with a flapping wave of his hands. "She's the only one who came. What do you want me to do? Send her away? Leave your sister out there at night with that thing that took her?" "Send me!" he shouts. "No! The mountain's no place to be after dark. The monsters . . ." His eyes flicker to me, the person he is willing to send up the mountain after dark. But there's nothing like consternation on his face. After all, he's paying me to risk my life, although it's a pretty stingy deal. The nephew is a relative, and another matter. "We already lost one," he finishes weakly. For a moment the boy looks like he'll challenge his uncle, but he catches his mother's gaze and his shoulders fall. He exhales loudly and slumps in his seat. "I'm not scared," he mutters, a final volley. But it's not true. He's all show in those army castoffs and he surrendered quick enough. I glance over at his boys against the wall. Quiet now, looking everywhere but at their friend. I revise his age down a few years. I let my eyes drift toward the boarded-up window where outside the sun is swiftly setting. If I had a watch, I'd make a show of checking it. "Seems to me all this talk is just wasting my daylight," I tell them. "Pay me what I'm worth and let me do my job or don't pay and let me go home. Makes no difference to me." I pause before I look at the mother. "But it might make a difference to your daughter." The boy flinches. I get a small tick of pleasure watching him flush in shame before a voice cuts through the heavy air. "Do you have clan powers?" It's the first thing the mother's said since she asked if I could find her daughter. She seems startled by her own outburst and raises her hands as if to cover her mouth. But she stops short, lowers her hands to her lap, and grips the fabric of her long skirt before she adds quietly, "Like him, the Monsterslayer. The rumor is you do. That he taught you. That you're . . . like him." I'm not like Neizghání, no. He is the Monsterslayer of legend, an immortal who is the son of two Holy People. I'm human, a five-fingered girl. But I'm not exactly normal, either, not like this brother and his friends. If the others asked, the boy or the uncle, I would refuse. But I won't deny a grieving mother. "Honágháahnii, born for K'aahanáanii." Only my first two clans, but that's enough. The crowd's muttered suspicions rise to vocal hostility, and one of the boys barks something ugly at me. The mother stands up, back straight, and silences the crowd with a hard stare. Her eyes fill with something fierce that stirs my sympathy in spite of my best efforts not to give a damn. "We have more," she says. The uncle starts to protest, but she cuts him off, her voice louder, commanding. "We have more trade. We'll pay. Just find her. Find my daughter." And that's my cue. I roll my shoulders, shifting the shotgun in the holster across my back. Habit makes me briefly palm the belt of shotgun shells at my waist and the Böker hunting knife sheathed against my hip. Fingertips brush the throwing knives tucked in the tops of my moccasin wraps, silver on the right, obsidian on the left. I sling my pack over my shoulder and turn on silent feet, moving through the muted crowd. Keep my head up, my hands loose, and my eyes straight ahead. I push the door open and step out of the stifling Chapter House just as the brother shouts, "What if you don't come back?" I don't bother to answer. If I don't come back, Lukachukai's got bigger problems than one missing girl. Excerpted from Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse, Tommy Arnold All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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