Son of a Trickster

It's a too long YA origin story that hopefully sets up a better sequel. I guess I was just frustrated waiting. I get it - Jared's a little messed up, but golden hearted and maybe a little in love. His family has secrets and there's trouble afoot. I didn't need an entire book to tell me that.

There's undoubtably something simmering under the surface, threatening to break Jared Martin out of his high school reverie of baking pot cookies, getting drunk, stoned and screwed. Something more than the day-to-day chaos that is his life aided in no small part by his foul-mouthed and volatile mom with her string of questionable exes. One whose feet she nailed gunned to the floor, the other whose dog she killed, slamming her truck into his pitbull then calmly backing up over it again.

I'll bet this thing has legs but it feels like the first 3 episodes of an 8 episode arc that might improve if I was allowed to binge the season.

4.5 Harrowing, one of a kind, full of humour. I snickered (like Ernie) at the exchanges between Jared and Sarah.

This was a fantastic, visceral coming of age story. Jared's struggle to deal with his family dysfunction and addiction issues was really heartfelt, and Robinson's witty, quick-paced dialogue keeps the story engaging throughout.

The magical realism parts took a backseat for most of the novel, and that actually suits the story really well. For most of the story it feels like a metaphor for Jared's experience, but by the end it unfolds into a more major theme. Robinson unveils it really well, and the way in which she does it makes the story incredibly enjoyable.

When they start putting trigger warnings on books, this one will need several. There's a lot of raw unpleasantness here and honestly, for the first third of the book I felt like the author was trying to prove how “hard” she was. By the time I was finished, I appreciated the not nice-ness as necessary to the story and really got into the characters. But its prose is very sparse and I would have liked more in some places where this “less is more” philosophy seems to hamper my understanding of what's happening between the characters. Also, I would have liked more talking crows.

A big fat thank you to whatever publisher it was who sent me this free copy for review.