Happy Wednesday Scribblers, I hope you are all having a great week. This week I have a book review for you. I know it’s been a while, but in my defense I wasn’t reading for pleasure the last few months. I was a judge in the Rainbow Awards, so I was reading for that, and I can’t really post reviews of those books I read. However, this week I’m please so share my review of Beware Mohawks Bearing Gifts by SA Collins.
Here we go:
I had high expectation for Beware Mohawks Bearing Gifts by SA Collins as it’s an ‘own voice’ story about an alternate Earth were the Natives People of America have a promised nation of their own (this idea breaks from our own history where the Indigenous People of North America were indeed promised their own nation by the British, but in our reality it did not happen). The North American continent has the United States and Canada parceled pretty much on the eastern coast of North America, which I found exciting and wanted to learn more about (I’m hoping some of this will be explored in the rest of the planned series. There are going to be six books in all so we shall see). The author provides a map of North America as it’s reflected in the novel, which was a nice touch of detail, one that left me with more questions than answers.
As I’m a bit of a history dork (I had an amazing History Teacher in college who shared the dark side of history, the stories that most of us never hear about), so I came into the story with many questions and was hoping for all of them to be answered, but of course, that wasn’t the nature of the novel. I had to put my expectation aside. Regardless, I was looking forward to seeing an Indigenous Persons perspective on this kind of Fantasy story, what I got was not what I expected. I believe that to be a good thing. The author did not beat the reader over the head with their agenda nor their bias. Yes, they had one, we all do. But instead of taking the opportunity to tell a story where the evil cis gender white men destroyed an entire culture and people the author took a path I was grateful for, they told an epic fantasy story about good and evil with characters that were engaging and wonderful to read. None of them were perfect and they all had their issues. This book was the set up for the series, but even with that, there is a lot of info that the author left out and I pouted a bit when it was finished.
In a way, this story reminds me a bit of the first novel Eye of the World in the Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan.
The main idea of this story, as I see it, is taking the legends and myths about a people many of us hardly know anything about and having an adventure exploring those myths. This is something the author does exceptionally well and I would love to read more about.
Could I sit here and nit-pick the story for being too wordy at times, and not wordy enough at others, of course, but that is a style choice of the author. It is there story to tell, so I will not pick apart how they choose to tell it.
If you want to read an epic fantasy story and learn a bit about the mythology of Native People then this is a must read. Beware Mohawks Bearing Gifts by SA Collins is heart fully thought out and well written. The deep dive into the character and their every thought can be a bit of a slog, but it’s manageable. I’m definitely looking forward to the sequel.
And there ya go, Scribblers my review of Beware Mohawks Bearing Gifts by SA Collins. Go out and buy the book (click here) and remember to like this post below (click on the heart and show me a little love, I’m needy like that) and please help spread the word by sharing this blog post on your social media platforms it really does help and I greatly appreciate all the love and support you send my way. Got a question leave it below in the comments or you can email me at info@mdneu.com. Until next time have a great week.