Book Review: Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

I've been following Rebecca Roanhorse on twitter for a few years now. She's been a fearless and tireless activist for better native representation in media in general and literature in particular, while working on her own fiction. Her breakout short story, last year's Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™, got a bunch of award nominations and won the Nebula award. Several weeks ago, her debut novel TRAIL OF LIGHTNING, came out. This week, the audio edition arrived, and I gobbled it up.

TOF is a post apocalyptic fantasy novel. After the global warming dam broke, and much of the US was covered in water, ancient Native spirits, who have lain dormant for a long time, have come back. In what used to be a Navajo reservation, and is now an independent Native nation surrounded by a wall, there are witches and gods and monster. And where there are monsters, there must also be monster slayers.

That's Maggie Hoskie. Survivor, former protege of an immortal hero, and monster slayer. When she's called to try and find a young girl taken by a monster, Maggie begins to discover that the evil that prowls the land goes far deeper than she would have imagined.

Trail of Lightning is, at the same time, absolutely fantastical and utterly real. It is a novel about the Native American experience, while also a fun, sometimes scary ride of an adventure. It is also a book that will make a stone have feelings. All kinds of feelings.

I would place it alongside works such as Mishell Baker's Arcadia Project trilogy and Daniel José Older's novels for teens and adults, as fun fantasy novels which are extremely aware of social, political, and racial issues. Smart fun. All art is political, of course, but I always prefer art where the creator is making conscious choices to art where the biases are baked in without thought.

This is a stellar debut, and I can't wait for more of Roanhorse's work.