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Look! I read a book! I loved Darcie Little Badger's first novel, Elatsoe, so I was super pumped to give her second book a try. Unfortunately I didn't like this one quite so well.
A Snake Falls To Earth follows two characters: Nina, a Lipan Apache girl who has inherited a love of storytelling from her great-grandmother and wants to understand more of her family's history, and Oli, a cottonmouth person living in the land of spirits who has finally left his mother's home and must make his own way in the world.
Both characters are great, and both characters' stories are great, but the book switches back and forth between them at great speed, and for most of the book there is no connection between the two stories. For me, this resulted in a very frustrating experience where I felt constantly tossed back out of my immersion in the book every time the pov switched. And given how often the pov switched, that meant that it was actually very hard for me to read this book.
I loved Nina's efforts to translate and understand the last story her great-grandmother told her, and I loved Oli's developing friendships with the various people around him (Ami, a toad person; Brightest, a hawk person; and the coyote sisters whose names I never kept straight). And there are various good themes that the book is exploring! But the structure meant that I just couldn't connect as deeply as I wanted to.
I think this book would have really worked for me if it were actually two completely separate novellas, one about Nina and one about Oli. And if it had to be one book, I still think it could have worked for me if a) the sections were longer so there was more time between pov swaps, and b) the stories had more obvious connections between them from earlier so it would feel to me from the beginning like there is a reason these stories are paired.
I know at least one person for whom the structure as it exists actually really did work though, so it seems to be very much personal taste on this matter. I just wish it had worked for me!
A Snake Falls To Earth follows two characters: Nina, a Lipan Apache girl who has inherited a love of storytelling from her great-grandmother and wants to understand more of her family's history, and Oli, a cottonmouth person living in the land of spirits who has finally left his mother's home and must make his own way in the world.
Both characters are great, and both characters' stories are great, but the book switches back and forth between them at great speed, and for most of the book there is no connection between the two stories. For me, this resulted in a very frustrating experience where I felt constantly tossed back out of my immersion in the book every time the pov switched. And given how often the pov switched, that meant that it was actually very hard for me to read this book.
I loved Nina's efforts to translate and understand the last story her great-grandmother told her, and I loved Oli's developing friendships with the various people around him (Ami, a toad person; Brightest, a hawk person; and the coyote sisters whose names I never kept straight). And there are various good themes that the book is exploring! But the structure meant that I just couldn't connect as deeply as I wanted to.
I think this book would have really worked for me if it were actually two completely separate novellas, one about Nina and one about Oli. And if it had to be one book, I still think it could have worked for me if a) the sections were longer so there was more time between pov swaps, and b) the stories had more obvious connections between them from earlier so it would feel to me from the beginning like there is a reason these stories are paired.
I know at least one person for whom the structure as it exists actually really did work though, so it seems to be very much personal taste on this matter. I just wish it had worked for me!
