Wake of Vultures

This was really quite good. It had a recommendation by Cherie Priest, and that worried me a bit, since I read one of her books (Maplecroft) and disliked it for being too dark and depressing. But this book was nothing like that. Lots of ugliness happening, of course, but there was no hopelessness. Nettie is a great character, who can be a bit coarse and difficult in the beginning, but she grows and gets to know herself better. Not to wonder she has difficulty accepting friendship at first, considering how little she got for the first years of her life. She is above all tenacious and courageous, risking herself several times to help her friends. The story moves along at a decent pace, and at times, quite a bit faster than that. Not all show more mysteries are resolved at the end, but it is rounded off enough for satisfaction. And if you're looking for diversity in fantasy, this is definitely one to try: aside from the main character being female, strong and smart and the book passing the Bechdel test, she is also half-comanche, half-black, identifies as male (and there are indications that this is not just to hide among men), and is attracted to both men and women. Aside from that, there are several native Americans and a gay guy. It's true that there are not a lot of women in the book, and that Nettie herself doesn't view women in a positive light, especially at first. This does make sense from her character's point of view, however, and I'm glad that the other woman who gets a decent amount of page time prefers dresses over men's clothes and teaches Nettie to accept more of herself.

The only reason I am giving this 4 stars instead of 5 is that I prefer my books to be more immersive. It was a great read, and I was invested, but I did not have much trouble setting the book aside. I think the pace was a bit too fast, as if we were skimming over the story instead of sinking into it.

Still, I'm already planning when to go into town to buy the next book. Highly recommended. show less

This was really quite good. It had a recommendation by Cherie Priest, and that worried me a bit, since I read one of her books (Maplecroft) and disliked it for being too dark and depressing. But this book was nothing like that. Lots of ugliness happening, of course, but there was no hopelessness. Nettie is a great character, who can be a bit coarse and difficult in the beginning, but she grows and gets to know herself better. Not to wonder she has difficulty accepting friendship at first, considering how little she got for the first years of her life. She is above all tenacious and courageous, risking herself several times to help her friends. The story moves along at a decent pace, and at times, quite a bit faster than that. Not all show more mysteries are resolved at the end, but it is rounded off enough for satisfaction. And if you're looking for diversity in fantasy, this is definitely one to try: aside from the main character being female, strong and smart and the book passing the Bechdel test, she is also half-comanche, half-black, identifies as male (and there are indications that this is not just to hide among men), and is attracted to both men and women. Aside from that, there are several native Americans and a gay guy. It's true that there are not a lot of women in the book, and that Nettie herself doesn't view women in a positive light, especially at first. This does make sense from her character's point of view, however, and I'm glad that the other woman who gets a decent amount of page time prefers dresses over men's clothes and teaches Nettie to accept more of herself.

The only reason I am giving this 4 stars instead of 5 is that I prefer my books to be more immersive. It was a great read, and I was invested, but I did not have much trouble setting the book aside. I think the pace was a bit too fast, as if we were skimming over the story instead of sinking into it.

Still, I'm already planning when to go into town to buy the next book. Highly recommended. show less

CW: rape, violence, harm to animals, brief body horror, historically accurate racially insensitive terms, possibly poor Native American representation (about which more in my review)

If you put Lonesome Dove in a blender with Supernatural and added a generous heaping of queerness, I think you might get Wake of Vultures. Nettie Lonesome is half Black and half Native American, though she knows nothing of her parents or to which tribe she might belong. She is more comfortable living as a man than as a woman, and she comes to understand that she is attracted to both men and women. Oh, and after killing a man in the barn one evening and watching him turn to sand, she can now see monsters. And she's haunted by the ghost of a woman who wants show more her to kill a monster that has been feeding on children in the desert. Nettie goes on a journey--a literal one to fulfill her quest and a figurative one to sort out what she can about who she is and how she will be in the world.

This was a strangely compelling read for me, "strangely" because I can't quite put my finger on what kept pulling me through it. I felt a little kept at a distance from everything, especially Nettie, but the setting and premise were interesting, and I wanted to see how Nettie would get on. I just... kept going, without really fully knowing why.

Aside from that ambivalence is my concerns about the Native American representation in the novel. This is not an own voices story, and I'm just unsure about Bowen's use of words like "Injun" throughout the novel, used by most of the characters as a label only and not as a derogatory term. Bowen discusses in her author's note the problem of how to make choices about words in historical narratives where the accurate word may be hurtful to readers now, but her discussion feels a little... off-hand and not nuanced enough and almost flippant? Then there's the question of her use of Native American shapeshifters in the story and of some other figures which may or may not be from Native American spiritual practices. I've done some research on the novel, and I can't find much about these aspects of it, save a handful of one-star Amazon reviews which literally say only that the representation isn't good and nothing about why or how. So I don't know. Proceed with caution, I guess. I will say that nothing struck me as awful or icky itself, beyond just my questioning of whether someone not from this background should be writing about such things in this way. But, as a white woman with very little knowledge on this subject, I also don't know what I'm talking about. There are two sequels to Wake of Vultures. I don't think I'm going to read them. Do with that what you will. show less

Sometimes, it's all in the spin. If you has said to me, "here, read this YA book with trigger scenes, set in the Old-Timey West with phrases like, "Poor critter was parched and gaunt as a crow's skeleton," I would have insincerely said, 'sure,' and immediately made plans to deep-six it down the nearest prairie well. But had you said, "here, I have this great book about a brown, mixed race, Native gender-bender girl who learns to see monsters after she kills one and is given a ghost-quest to take down the biggest, scariest, baby-stealing monster of all, but perhaps she'll have help from some other legends," I would have been intrigued, especially if you mentioned birds.

So, I'm cleaning out the TBR, and I have this in the library stack, show more and I have far, far too much of a headache for Miéville's wordy tricks and politics, so I pick this up, and you can switch me twice with a porcupine's tail if I didn't finish it the very same night. Even though--and this is a very big even though--it's spoken in gawd-awful cowboy talk: "Stunned, she nearly swallowed a fly; in ten years as Monty's shadow, this was her first invitation to join the wranglers for grub at the ranch house." With more spitting than a llama convention. But it begins quickly, throwing the hero/ine Nettie right into trouble when a fancily dressed stranger tries to corner her inside the barn of her adopted parents' tiny farmstead. I might've hung it up then and there if Bowden's writing weren't so durn good, and the sickle in the stranger's eye didn't seem to deter him from carrying on, until Nettie stabs him in the heart with a piece of wood and he turns to sand.

This becomes a watershed moment for her where she becomes brave enough to sneak away from her clearly drunk and abusive Ma and Pa and venture over to the next ranch to seek a job. She adopts a male personality and is starting to fit in when she discovers all sorts of beasties in the night, particularly the red-eyed, fanged ones at the local whorehouse. Soon after, the ranch hands discover a half-dead ancient Native woman who keeps repeating, "Pia Mupitsi," and from there, Net's destiny or curse is clear.

It is truly an intriguing and well written book. Net/Nat is annoying, as all teenagers, refusing to communicate when she finally has a learning opportunity and saying, "ain't" every time she does. But it's all made plausible by her horrible upbringing that didn't give her the skills to puzzle out a world in shades of grey, and Bowden stays faithful to that set-up until the end, exposing Net in bits and pieces to the idea that not everything is one thing or another. In the setting of the Special Orphan Trope, she at least commits to the very gradual awakening of the ignorant and stubborn orphan.

But here's what no doubt caught Past-carol's attention: there's some intriguing stuff running through here about gender and sexuality, and as Nettie has to navigate a man's world by becoming Nat, she starts to learn identity is broader than what she learned from Ma and Pa. I was curious to see if Bowden was going to establish Netti as transgender, but by the end, I don't think she did. I think Net is uncomfortable with definitions of femaleness and wants the freedom and roles of the male world, but I can see where future books might have her just be a 'tomboy' girl--who is, admittedly, attracted to both male and female. At any rate, a fascinating exploration of the topic as Net meets more people and develops relationships.

In some ways the quest is a McGuffin; though she's forced into it, her journey isn't really about learning about what she's after. Rather, the goal is to learn potential skills that could help and engaging in adventures along the way, although, as is typical, part of the strategy seems to be relying on her own Specialness. The landscaped developed is both rich and sparse, and has the dry, arid feeling of the Texas desert, ghost towns and isolated farms included.

There's a prolonged non-significant side incident on the way that was deeply disturbing and even more triggering than the initial farmyard scene. Seriously, I'm left wondering at the authorial choice; it's the kind of thing that most definitely means I'd suggest it for the mid-teen crown not an advanced-reader younger one. Bowden is probably trying to make some kind of complex metaphor about sexuality in this book, but it is often contextualized in a bloody, violent framework. Had I been Nettie, I might have chosen, 'none of the above.' Which will be interesting to see how gender and sexuality is negotiated, if Bowden continues to remain roughly faithful to her chosen timeline of 1870s.

And while there's a resolution, it is not an entirely clear one, so negative point for that. Still, the writing was very good, the landscape and atmosphere solidly developed and the Native myths intriguing. I'm sure I'll pick up the next.

Three and a half cowpokes show less

I really enjoyed this one. It’s fun, for starters, the sort of read that doesn’t quite feel like reading, and Nettie’s voice makes it come even more alive. I liked how the mythologies of the West were woven together, too, and the whole Wild West feel of the piece—characters, towns, desert, you name it. I liked the interstiality too—Nettie’s half-Black, half-probably-Comanche, genderqueer, and bisexual, and she’s not the only character who’s brown or not straight, either. And I really liked the adventure plot of the story, which had me the edge of my seat a few times and twists nicely.

8/10

Damn fine read, this story.

What the author pulled from history and from legend and story and fantasy and wove here is the very kind of magic I like best, with characters I want and need with and mourn and cheer with.

Nettie starts out a tangled, knotted angry, stubborn mess. You know from the start that untangling any of that won't be easy or neat or simple and oh boy, that's an understatement. How this one ends is at once too soon and HELL YEAH.

So go. You want this one.

I really like alt-westerns and gritty gals and diversity and shapeshifters, so I dig this book something fierce. That said, I really appreciated the author's thoughtful acknowledgement note that she's playing in a sandbox with a history that's not truly hers. It adds a note of grace to an already strong and singing book. See you again soon, I hope, Nettie Lonesome.