A review by kenzieburns
Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger

adventurous mysterious fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I'm surprised this book is YA and not middle-grade, based on the somewhat poor execution of the plot and character development arcs in my opinion. I didn't love how explicit the author was in spelling everything out for us, and even when the characters had some big discovery that was relevant to the story, it felt very underdone. Also, the world building/magic system felt disjointed to me. It's hard to write magical realism, particularly when the world overlaps with the one we live in, but a lot of the magical aspects of this story seemed to be tossed into the plot carelessly. I think the world building would have been much better without the magical aspects that were directly related to the plot (

for example, wtf was going on with the vampires? They didn't feel necessary to the story. I kept thinking that Allerton was going to be some head vampire or something but he was just a powerful magician? So why did he even kidnap vampires?

). 

The places where this book excelled were in weaving pieces of Ellie's Indigenous identity with the plot and her character development. I also appreciated Vivian's character, especially how she really relied on the art of storytelling to communicate important information. The author was skilled at shining light on the Indigenous experience in predominantly white society, and as a white person, I was both saddened for Ellie having to experience such micro- and macro-agressions and grateful to the author for putting these experiences to paper for me to learn from. 

Lastly, a spoiler on whether or not the dog (Kirby) "dies":

technically he's dead for the whole story. There is a part where he is really dead-dead, like Ellie can't bring him back but he does come back in the end, and the story ends on the like "There were no broken hearts."