A Fan's Playground

Look! I read a book! I loved Darcie Little Badger's first novel, Elatsoe, so I was super pumped to give her second book a try. Unfortunately I didn't like this one quite so well.

A Snake Falls To Earth follows two characters: Nina, a Lipan Apache girl who has inherited a love of storytelling from her great-grandmother and wants to understand more of her family's history, and Oli, a cottonmouth person living in the land of spirits who has finally left his mother's home and must make his own way in the world.

Both characters are great, and both characters' stories are great, but the book switches back and forth between them at great speed, and for most of the book there is no connection between the two stories. For me, this resulted in a very frustrating experience where I felt constantly tossed back out of my immersion in the book every time the pov switched. And given how often the pov switched, that meant that it was actually very hard for me to read this book.

I loved Nina's efforts to translate and understand the last story her great-grandmother told her, and I loved Oli's developing friendships with the various people around him (Ami, a toad person; Brightest, a hawk person; and the coyote sisters whose names I never kept straight). And there are various good themes that the book is exploring! But the structure meant that I just couldn't connect as deeply as I wanted to.

I think this book would have really worked for me if it were actually two completely separate novellas, one about Nina and one about Oli. And if it had to be one book, I still think it could have worked for me if a) the sections were longer so there was more time between pov swaps, and b) the stories had more obvious connections between them from earlier so it would feel to me from the beginning like there is a reason these stories are paired.

I know at least one person for whom the structure as it exists actually really did work though, so it seems to be very much personal taste on this matter. I just wish it had worked for me!

I loved this book!

It's YA fantasy, and it's very much doing its own thing instead of following the usual YA fantasy tropes. It's a little urban fantasy, a little magical realism, a little horror (if you're a wuss like me), a little humour, and no romance whatsoever for the main character.

Ellie is a Lipan Apache teen, in a version of the world where various fantastical and magical things are real. Ellie's family has passed down a secret for raising the ghosts of dead animals, and she shares this ability.

When Ellie's cousin dies in what looks like a car accident, he tells her in a dream that he's been murdered by a man named Abe Allerton. Now it's up to Ellie, her best friend Jay, the ghost of her dead dog Kirby, and her family to find out what happened and bring justice to pass!

Some of the many things I love about this book:

1. The protagonist is explicitly asexual (and probably aromantic), but a big deal isn't made of it, it's just a fact about her and there's no ace 101 speeches by characters or narrative.

2. Ellie's family is deeply important to her, and a relevant part of all she does. So many books about young people (teen and child) are about separating the kids from the adults in caring roles in their lives, so that the kid has space to Make Big Decisions and Accomplish Things. Ellie does these things, but in the context of a family who love her and are doing their imperfect best.

3. Speaking of Ellie's family, her six-times-great grandmother is a major character in the book despite never showing up because she's been dead for generations, and I love her very much.

4. The way magic is integrated into the world as a totally normal and expected thing, and yet there are still these moments of the numinous with it. The prehistoric ghost ocean!!

5. Ellie and her family's indigenous identity informs so much about them, their lives, their priorities, and their experience of living in the USA, but the narrative is never didactic, instead it's "yup this is how things are"

6. Super compelling, I didn't want to put it down.

7. The background b-plot romance between Jay's sister Ronnie and a new young vampire, Al, was surprisingly great. Also the buff bridesmaids. They only show up briefly but they're a delight.

8. GHOST MAMMOTH