The winner of a Time Magazine award, Elatsoe (Ellie) Bride is a descendent of the Lipan tribe of the United States. But this isn’t the United States you know and love. This is a United States with magic, with ghosts, and with vampires all living together. When Ellie’s cousin Trevor is murdered and, at the same time, sends a long-distance message in her dreams, Ellie’s problems just begin.
The world created in Elatsoe is fascinating and often mirrors our own, especially in terms of social ills. People subtly discriminate and not-so-subtly alienate Ellie and her people as she looks into Trevor’s death. Even knowing the identity of the murderer doesn’t help as the killer is a well-respected doctor (most of this comes out in the first chapters).
Ellie is a great hero for the story. An aromatic, heritage-proud, and magic-enhanced individual, she’s an interesting character. Nearly all of the novel is told from her point-of-view. Ellie drives a car investigating her cousin’s death at a mysterious location in Texas. Her friend Jay is an unconventional sidekick, and most of Ellie’s family and other friends serve the novel well. With these types of stories, there’s often the problem where you can’t have a good-hearted character kill an evil villain, but the villain has such control that calling the police isn’t an option. This dilemma is satisfactorily resolved.
For such a praised book, I was surprised by a few technical issues. An abrupt point-of-view change near the end seemed out of place. I also had a hard time determining if this was a YA or a MG book. I could argue it both ways. Ellie is seventeen in the novel, but she seemed more like fourteen to me. And while I liked most of the book, I thought Jay was a shallow character and not much of a foil or sidekick to Ellie. My last quibble is Trevor tells Ellie everything about the murder. It’s not much of a mystery, though I suspect it wasn’t intended to be.
Overall, this is a fine book for a certain type of reader. Someone who enjoys a relatively clean book (just language and some violence) but loves darkness and weird environments. Someone who can forego a romantic subplot in favor of a rollicking adventure. And someone who likes to see justice done over a traditional mystery. I think a few readers will walk away puzzled, but the ones who stick to the end will likely enjoy this novel.