Bookish Discussion:
Isn’t it great when you discover a book that is under hyped or was never on your radar and you just happened to stumble upon it and it made you really happy? Which is one such book you stumbled upon recently and loved and would recommend to everyone?
Thoughts on Elatsoe:
Story Blurb: This is a story written by an own voice author about a 17 year old girl – Elatsoe/Ellie and her heroic adventure. Ellie belongs to the Lipan Apache community and lives with her family in an America where humans and supernatural beings co-exist. I was instantly attracted to this world since X-Men is one of my favorite movies and worlds to be in. Like X-Men, there are people with good abilities and then there are those with abilities used to harm others. For instance, Ellie can raise the dead and her best friend is the ghost of her dead dog, Kirby. But then there are also Vampires and Faes, and evil ghosts, amongst other supernatural beings inhabiting this world.
Trigger Warnings: Death of a loved one, xenophobia, some amount of torture and gore, murder
When a seemingly innocent yet tragic accident claims the life of her beloved cousin, the story starts and we go on an adventurous and really scary journey with Ellie and her friends and family to bring her cousin justice.
Plot, World building and Writing Style: The story isn’t as straightforward as I expected it to be. In fact, what is interesting is that while we get to read Ellie’s story and find out who the villain is, the illustrations on the top of each chapter tell us a different story, about Ellie’s great great grandmother – Six-great, and in some ways the stories are connected, yet not connected as well. I really enjoyed the simplistic world building, as well as the familial and friendly style of writing. I need to check out more of Little Badger’s works 🙂 There are some very scary and gory scenes in the book, which spooked me out completely. I love the horror genre, so I was absolutely delighted by those scenes. But if you’re weak of heart, then maybe, read this in the day 😉 I also enjoyed all the little back stories narrated by Ellie’s parents, about their folklore.
Characters: There are quite a lot of characters in the story, but interestingly, they all stay with you. My favorite characters however were Ellie, Kirby and Jay. All three of them are so amazing together. They gave such a fresh face to what friendship is. I think there might be some romantic feelings that Jay has for Ellie, but I loved the fact that everyone accepted that this 17 year old can be asexual and that its completely normal! When will we have that in our world, I wonder. Soon I hope.
I think the only thing that was slightly disappointing for me was the cost and availability of this book. I wish it was more hyped and I wish it was available in countries like India. Even the hardcover on Amazon India is very expensive. So I had to buy the kindle version of the book, however I don’t like reading illustrated novels on kindle one bit. Maybe one day, I’ll get my hands on the book 🙂
So, have you read this book? Do you have any recommendations for books with asexual representation that I should read? 🙂
Starry Eyed Enigma 