Trail of Lightning (The Sixth World, #1) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Sep 02, 2018 Chelsea rated it it was amazing

Shelves: uf-pnr

This review was originally posted at Vampire Book Club.

Trail of Lightning, like its heroine Maggie Hoskie, packs a powerful punch in a small package. This urban fantasy debut is brimming with fresh, clever worldbuilding, a robust mythology, and visuals that simply slay.

Maggie is the kind of heroine I love most. Flawed, but determined. She lost family—like everyone did in the Big Water (the apocalyptic flooding that sets the stage for this world)—but after that she lost more. Her Dinétah (former This review was originally posted at Vampire Book Club.

Trail of Lightning, like its heroine Maggie Hoskie, packs a powerful punch in a small package. This urban fantasy debut is brimming with fresh, clever worldbuilding, a robust mythology, and visuals that simply slay.

Maggie is the kind of heroine I love most. Flawed, but determined. She lost family—like everyone did in the Big Water (the apocalyptic flooding that sets the stage for this world)—but after that she lost more. Her Dinétah (formerly the Navajo reservation) clan powers make her a lethal killer and fast as hell. Dangerous, scary shit to everyone else, right? She’d been taken in by the immortal hero Neizghání and trained to hunt monsters. He was her everything. Mentor, crush, family. …and he just disappeared on her.

To say Maggie gives no fucks wouldn’t be accurate, but she’d sure like you to think so. She’s hardened her heart away from letting anyone in. It doesn’t end well. But with Neizghání gone, someone has to slay the monsters plaguing Dinétah. She kills one of the creatures easy enough, but doesn’t recognize it. On her mission to slay these monsters, she’d slowly building a family around her. Friends. Frenemies like the trickster god Coyote. She still hunts for Neizghání, unable to give up on him, even as slowly her circle grows. More people to protect. More people determined to save her.

I included Trail in a roundup of book recommendations for fans of the TV show Wynonna Earp, and that may be the best way to describe it. It’s violent and bloody with this beautiful emotional core. Fans of the Mercy Thompson series and the Women of the Otherworld books will also find something to love here.

There isn’t quite found family for Maggie in Trail of Lightning, but the promise of it is there. I’m curious to see how both the brilliant world Rebecca Roanhorse crafted expands in the sequel, and how Maggie’s interactions with others on rez changes as she begins to own her own Monsterslayer title.

Sexual content: So much innuendo from Coyote, but also kissing ...more

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Feb 17, 2019 Vanessa rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019-books-read

Set in a post apocalyptic world, where global warming created a massive flood, Trail of Lightning bridges a traditional and a new "scavenger" lifestyle. Located behind walls in the remnants of a Navaho, (Dinetah), reservation, people do whatever they can to survive.
Maggie Hoskie is a monster hunter. In a nation rife with gods and mythical creatures, she hunts the worst of the worst. Singularly alone, feared, often taunted and hated, Maggie draws on her incredible "clan" powers to slay these cre ...more

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