A review by booksthatburn
A Snake Falls to Earth by Darcie Little Badger

mysterious reflective tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

The worldbuilding is wonderful, explaining a lot of things without feeling like it’s infodumping. Oli has a lot of fascinating anecdotes and animal facts, while Nina tends to provide more of the details about environmental concerns on Earth, though that rough division blurs later on. It did throw me a little that Oli’s sections are narrated in first person and Nina’s are narrated in third, since they’re both crucial for the story.

I like the audiobook narrators, they did a good job overall. The story starts slowly, spending a long time with both main characters before they meet late in the book. Oli leaves home and meets the people who become his friends, then goes through a lot to help them. Nina is worried about her home on both a local and global level, and is growing in her awareness of how she can take action to protect it in big and small ways. The pacing feels deliberate, treating their meeting as an important thing that happens, but not a goal. They have lives before and after their brief intersection. 
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