TRAIL OF LIGHTNING
By Rebecca Roanhorse
~Book Review~
*WARNING! CONTAINS SPOILERS!*
YOU MEAN TO TELL ME that a cataclysmic flood destroys the world as we know it, leading to the rebirth of the Navajo Nation in a mysterious and dangerous Sixth World where gods and monsters reclaim the earth? I am totally here for this. The tension is real!
On the world-building front, Roanhorse knocks it out of the park. The descriptions of the desert, the mesas, the forests of ponderosa and blue spruce carpeting lonely peaks, are all utterly gorgeous, and there is a constant air of menace as ghosts and children-eating monsters roam the hills. Descendants of clans inherit specific magical powers to help them survive their gritty and post-apocalyptic reality, and we get a wise-cracking Coyote who has an invested interest in our heroine Maggie Hoskie.
However, the plot quickly splits into too many threads as the book struggles with what it wants to be. What seems to be a promising monster slaying adventure/mystery gets derailed by an unnecessary love triangle that overtakes the initial premise. Someone is behind the release of increasingly dangerous monsters upon Dinétah, and loner monster slayer Maggie Hoskie teams up with medicine man Kai to investigate.
A common complaint I’ve had of late is the main character proves to be the least engaging, and Trail of Lightning continues my frustrations. Initially I liked Maggie Hoskie, Dinétah monster hunter with lineage gifts of supernatural speed and bloodlust. Despite being quite humorless, she kicked ass, and I was sucked in by the promise of a dark and tangled relationship with her former mysterious mentor, Neizgháni.
Here’s where the issue came in: this book seemed like it should have started with her training and adventures with Neizgháni. The flashbacks with him take up such a significant part of the book that it begs the question why this wasn’t the original storyline in the first place. The consequence is we keep being told about this deep connection they had, as well as how betrayed she feels by him, that we’re dying to have the two reunite already (Never mind what’s happening with Maggie and present day traveling companion Kai). The former mentor-student reunion doesn’t happen until the last quarter of the book, and when it does, it’s in this weird stand-off in a monster dueling ring where he kisses her out of the blue. It feels quite out of left field for someone who had been so carefully guarded about his emotions before.
It also leads to the book taking an abrupt turn toward romance and resolving the love triangle between Maggie, Neizgháni, and good guy healer Kai. This felt like such a departure from Maggie’s character to suddenly be so held up by boyz, and it left the end of the book feeling messy, as if it wasn’t quite sure what it wanted to be.
It would have been interesting for Neizgháni to have joined Maggie and Kai at the start of their investigation into the monsters, and keep these three as the focal point to really flesh out their relationships. Instead, the plot gets constantly distracted by side quests that we don’t really care about, and at the end, it’s a bit confusing when the main quest gets addressed almost as if by accident. I didn’t buy the villain’s true goal; it seemed a very complicated way to get what he wanted.
This book is still easy to get lost in, and although the urban fantasy aspects and romance’s fight to take over the driver’s seat distracted the plot, I am still excited to see where Roanhorse goes in future installments of The Sixth World series, such as Storm of Locusts.
Recommended for fans of: Patricia Briggs, Ilona Andrews, Karsten Knight, and Tony Hillerman
