Review: Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World #1) by Rebecca Roanhorse

Verdict: Amazing worldbuilding and seriously addictive writing.

My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Genre: Post-Apocalyptic Fantasy, I guess?

Published by Saga Press, June 26th 2018

Find it on Goodreads.

While most of the world has drowned beneath the sudden rising waters of a climate apocalypse, Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) has been reborn. The gods and heroes of legend walk the land, but so do monsters.

Maggie Hoskie is a Dinétah monster hunter, a supernaturally gifted killer. When a small town needs help finding a missing girl, Maggie is their last—and best—hope. But what Maggie uncovers about the monster is much larger and more terrifying than anything she could imagine.

Maggie reluctantly enlists the aid of Kai Arviso, an unconventional medicine man, and together they travel to the rez to unravel clues from ancient legends, trade favors with tricksters, and battle dark witchcraft in a patchwork world of deteriorating technology.

As Maggie discovers the truth behind the disappearances, she will have to confront her past—if she wants to survive.

Welcome to the Sixth World.

I have been excited for this book ever since I found about it – and it did not disappoint me at all. Rebecca Roanhorse has created a seriously cool, very much needed different Urban Fantasy here that makes me very excited for what is to come.

Living in a post-apocalyptic Dinétah (formerly the Navajo Reservation) where gods and demons walk the world, Maggie is a grim, lonely, super strong woman. She is a monster hunter with not much to live for, she is snarky and broken, and while I found her fairly stereotypical for the genre I also found her believable and for the most part easy to root for, which is pretty much all I ask for in my UF.

The pacing is breakneck with never a slow moment and I pretty much inhaled the book whole. But, and this is, if I am being honest, a quite big negative, I did not get along all that well with the plot, I found it in places difficult to follow, I thought the characters often were sent from A to B without it being quite clear why that was. (also, if anybody has read this, can we please talk about that ending?!)

The strongest part for me was, hands-down, the worldbuilding. It is brilliantly done, nicely woven and most of all just so very different to what I usually see. Every scene is done vividly, set in a nearly cinematic manner. The language works also really well to convey as sense of place. It is on the strength of that wonderful world that I cannot wait for the next book in the series – which will be released in about a year’s time.