Rio Grande Fall

I have a mixed response to this book. On the one hand, it is a struggle of good vs evil as played out in a drug power struggle countered by a 30 yr old private investigator of Mexican ancestry. He is guided to access his spirit power by a good bruja, Lorenza. On the other hand, especially in the beginning, too much time is spent with characters questioning each other as a way to give the reader background, and often the same aspects are discussed more than once. Sonny even mentions at one point that he is too philosophical to be a good PI (altho he isn't actually philosphical, just full of doubts about the life of the spirit). Near the end, Lorenza explains the Aztec concept of cycles -- of life and of the worlds where a seed of evil is show more always present in the new world born from the chaos of the old one falling apart.
I get the impression the author is just learning the skill of writing myster/suspense, & could have used a better editor. For example, early in the book he tells Rita he will see her "tonight" yet instead he visits another woman as part of his investigation, and no mention is made of his missed appointment. I got the feeling Rita wasn't real in the author's use of her, and the same with his sporadic mention of his mother: just a literary device. At least twice in the book he uses almost the same phrasing in describing autumn in the valley: the gardens maturing, cottonwoods turning golden, apples, red chile ristras.
I kept reading because there were a lot of Spanish words scattered throughout and I wanted to increase my comfort in that language. Also because I do believe in the struggle of good & evil. And because of the presence of some poetically descriptive passages which were dropped into the pauses between action. e.g. Thank you "for leading me into the world of my guardian spirits, the world alive with talking tres, river murmurs, mountain advice, butterfly souls, bluebird songs of wisdom, seeds of grass, words of the poet, cry of child, sound of door banging...He had become a ghost...Death, if that's what had crawled into his bidy, was not feraful. Death was a light that released the soul, death was a wind mourning around the corners of the earth, singing around the four cosmic corners of the universe..." (p.354). show less

Book two in the Sonny Baca mystery series is set during the Albuquerque NM Hot Air Balloon Fiesta. It’s set to be the biggest moneymaker for the city, until a body plummets from a gondola. Was it a tragic accident, or was the woman murdered?

There’s a lot going on here. We have the aftermath of book one’s mystery; the woman who falls from the balloon is a key witness in that case. There’s an effort to bring in a major drug shipment, using the Balloon Fiesta as cover. Sonny has found a homeless family that he’s trying to help. His mother wants him to forget this investigation business and settle down with Rita, a very good woman. It’s Rita who takes Sonny to Lorenza, a curandera who will perform a limpieza - a cleansing show more ceremony – to help Sonny dispel the trauma of his past encounter with Raven.

Sonny is in touch with his spirit nagual – the coyote, but is he really a brujo? Can he fly? And can he go up against Raven, who is definitely an evil brujo who has slipped through the various efforts to capture him.

I like magical realism, in general, but this series has gone too far. I read mysteries for the plot, the action, the fast-paced story. This book failed to deliver that. It lacked focus for me and the fact that it took me a week to read it, is reflective of that. I just wasn’t interested. show less

I really enjoyed reading a fantasy book with magic and traditions from my own part of the world. For folks who believe in a the mystical traditions described in this book, I suppose it may not be fantasy, but the same can be said for Celtic magic in books based on those tradions.

I found this a very interesting book set in New Mexico. Sonny Baca is Nuevo Mexicano and a P.I. in Alburquerque. I liked the story and found Sonny and his friends to be very interesting. Anaya is apparently one of the founders of Chicano literature and this particular book is over ten years old.

I did think a couple of times as I was reading that without last year's excursions into mythology and Native American religion that it would have been a little hard to follow Sonny in his discoveries of the old native traditions. Still, the adventure was enjoyable and I might read another of Anaya's novels.

I've read just about every Anaya book. This was my least favorite