Storm of Locusts

Starred review from March 4, 2019
Roanhorse’s second Sixth World apocalyptic fantasy novel is less emotionally charged than its predecessor, Trail of Lightning, but dives deeply into the characters, introduces a great new one, and continues weaving Navajo beliefs overtly and subtly into the story. Maggie Hoskie, monsterslayer, learns that Kai, the powerful young medicine man she loves, may have been kidnapped by a cult leader with powers of his own. Maggie is forced to venture into the ravaged world beyond Dinétah, the Navajo’s protected land, to save both Kai and Dinétah itself. There’s plenty of tension, particularly with Maggie cut off from her homeland and trying hard to keep from killing anyone. She’s joined by teen girl Ben, who displays a perfect balance of strength and vulnerability, and her effect on the otherwise distant Maggie is a high point of the book. The depiction of North America in ruins is a dark treat, including vivid scenes of women saving enslaved women and supernatural locust swarms descending. Readers who enjoyed Roanhorse’s first book will eagerly blaze through her second.

March 15, 2019
Maggie Hoskie and her god-blasting clan powers are back in the second book of Roanhorse's post-apocalyptic Sixth World series; this time she's taking on The White Locust, a man with clan powers who wants to destroy the now-thriving dystopian Navajo Nation (or Dinétah), Maggie's home.We already know that the Big Water has drowned most of America, and Dinétah is one of the last remaining strongholds. The magic of the Diné (Navajo) gods and the clan powers they bestow, and the powerful walls the medicine men constructed, are the only thing holding the chaos of the rest of the world back. What we don't know is that a man given the power to rain down locusts and create humanlike figures from them, a cult leader called The White Locust, wants to destroy Dinétah for rejecting him as a mixed blood. What we find out is that this man has Kai, Maggie's love, a medicine man she feels she has betrayed--and who betrayed her. Thus begins Maggie's journey to find Kai, to defeat the White Locust--and to face her fears of intimacy and betrayal, garnered from a tragic, violent past. Her journey takes her out of the safety of Dinétah, straight into the hands of people willing to do anything to survive, cultures built on ones that existed in the American Southwest but are now powerful, rich, and terrifying warrior-states. It also takes her to zoot suit-wearing trickster Gods. Roanhorse is the first Indigenous American to win a Nebula, a Hugo, and the Campbell award and is nominated for a second Nebula this year. She's a groundbreaking writer, weaving Diné language and culture throughout her work in innovative and deeply important ways while at the same time providing a purely joyous reading experience.Roanhorse's latest is a killer.

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Starred review from April 1, 2019
When Maggie Hoskie's most recent bounty hunt goes badly wrong, she finds herself acting as Auntie to a strong-willed 16-year-old, Ben, with clan powers and a thirst for revenge. Then the Goodacre twins show up at her door looking for help finding their youngest brother, Caleb, who's gone missing along with Kai, a man Maggie would do anything for. The Goodacres are convinced that Caleb is dead and that Kai was in on it, under the influence of a doomsday cult led by a mysterious figure calling himself the White Locust. But Maggie knows Kai would never hurt Caleb, even if his last words to her (via surveillance footage) were unsettling: "I love you. Don't follow me." Expanding on the richly detailed world she built in Trail of Lightning (2018), Roanhorse deepens our appreciation for the postapocalyptic landscape while enriching our understanding of the indigenous customs and legends that have come alive within it. Maggie Hoskie is as complex a heroine as you could wish for, and everything about this installment sings. A must-read for anyone interested in own-voices or speculative fiction.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)