Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger)

Elatsoe
Darcie Little Badger
Levine Querido
Fiction, YA Fantasy
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION: Teenaged Elatsoe has never been a stranger to ghosts, descended from a long line of Apache women who can summon the spirits of dead animals, anything from a deceased pet to extinct denizens of Earth's prehistory. She plans to go to college and become a paranormal investigator, perhaps with her friend Jay and Kirby, the ghost of her beloved spaniel. But when a relative dies after a tragic car accident, plans get derailed - particularly when Trevor contacts Elatsoe via dream, on the brink of death, to tell her that he was murdered. The girl is determined to live up to her promise to the ghost and bring a killer to justice, but dabbling with life and death is not to be done lightly, and there are many dangers that her mother and the old stories have not prepared her to face.

REVIEW: Elatsoe has been winning awards and praise for some time, so I finally decided to give it a go. The tale plays out in a world much like our own, but where powers and magics (and curses, and monsters) are known things; the boyfriend of Jay's older sister has the curse of vampirism, and Jay himself is a descendant of the faerie king Oberon, though the attendant powers have been much diluted. Elatsoe thinks she understands the gravity of the knowledge she has inherited and the lessons of her legendary (if forgotten by white history) sixth grandmother, a monster hunter and ghost summoner who shared her name, but has never really faced any dangers before; the biggest challenge was learning to summon the ghost of Kirby. She is, at least, smart enough not to blindly trust dreams or expect others to do likewise; she knows dreams are unreliable messengers, and that she needs proof before she can go to authority. Fortunately, she's surrounded by people who believe her. This is not one of those young adult stories where her parents are skeptical or overprotective obstacles; they help where they can, but Elatsoe and Jay are the driving forces behind the investigation, which grows much bigger than they could have imagined. Along the way, they confront issues of racism and colonialism and whitewashed history, and an enemy who does not understand how their actions can be perceived as monstrous by their victims. It's a nicely different perspective on fantasy and history, and I enjoyed it start to finish.

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