A review by smadams
The Removed by Brandon Hobson

2.0

This is a book I was definitely too ignorant for. I know very little about Native mythology and I found much of the story hard to follow. At the beginning, I didn't care for Edgar's chapters at all and was only interested in Sonja. By the end, that was reversed. Also, maybe I'm just dumb because

Spoiler

people are saying that the Darkening Place was limbo after having killed himself and that by following the cherry blossoms Edgar was actually passing on to the afterlife with his ancestors. I did NOT pick up on that at all

. I thought the Maria/Ernest/Wyatt story was fine. The parts with Tsala were so confusing to me. Maybe if I reread this one day I'll understand more having finished the book. Ultimately I found it uninteresting. I wanted to like it a lot more than I did. I also think it needs better cover design. I want to reiterate that I cannot in anyway speak to the representation this book gave because I am not Native American.