Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey

[lightreads]

Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healey

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


When you have as many TBR books as I do, it's hard to keep track of what came from where. If I had to guess, I'd say I got this book off a list of good LGBTQ young adult, or possibly a friend recced it due to the presence of an asexual character. The book isn't worth it just for that -- nothing is worth it just for checking a diversity box -- but it is worth it.

It's a lively bit of fantasy about a girl at a boarding school who -- you think you can fill in the rest of this one, and you can in broad outline, but not in the specifics. I ended up reading a lot of wikipedia articles on Maori legends to get educated enough to keep up with this one. It's a bit more literal about its magic metaphors than I like my fantasy, but there's this very real, warm heart of friendship and young bravery to this book, and it worked.

It's a debut, and it shows, but I liked it. I liked Healey; this is one of those books where you get to learn a lot about the author just based on what she loves. And I'll read her next book, sure, but I'm really interested in her fifth, her sixth, her tenth. I have a feeling one of those will be a knockout.




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Comments

[ellen_fremedon]

I just read Healey's second, The Shattering, and it's quite good, too. It's much tighter than Guardian of the Dead-- the plot and the theme are better integrated, and the pacing of revelation is much better controlled-- though it is also pretty predictable if you've read American Gods. Or The Golden Bough. Or a lot of things. But she managed to make that not a problem-- her characters haven't read those, and my having a level of knowledge that they didn't turned the plot from a whodunnit into a thriller. I was deeply invested, despite seeing most of the plot twists coming a mile off.