Son of a Trickster is the first book in the trilogy Trickster series by Eden Robinson. It was first published 2017 by Knopf Canada and the audiobook was narrated by Jason Ryll. This was advertised to me as a YA Urban fantasy, and I think the Young Adult part is obvious while the fantasy is less so, but first, lets go through the story quickly.
Jared is a native American from Canada who has grown up less than ideally, with a mother who is constantly drunk or on drugs, dating a drug dealer and having a sadistic ex-boyfriend. His father leeching of money from him, and his stepsister being pregnant while her boyfriend dumped her. Jared solves that by trying to sell drugs to pay his father and the bills, while being drunk off his ass or high himself. At the end, he finds out that the man who he thought was his father, is not, and his real father is far more complicated.
Jared comes off as complicated, feeling real, as he is as messed up as someone in his situation can be. He is constantly afraid that his mother will go off on him or bail on him, while his mother keeps him from his father and his grandmother, the only sane person in this book. He drenches himself in drugs and alcohol while truly wanting to help people, often taking care of them when they need him even if he hates them. It is just a pity that he is mostly high or drunk in this book so most of those traits are overshadowed by him puking his guts out.
There is hardly a decent person, outside the grandmother, in this one. Not that they are badly written but they are just horrible people. The father is using his son for money, the sister is dumping her child on Jared so she can go out partying, his mother is psychological abusive, which no one is commenting on in neither the book or the reviews of the book, and we have messed up psychos all around them. Almost all children are depicted as messed up, hinting at alcoholism, racism, bullying pregnancy, and suicide, and the grownups pretty much just ignore it or aren’t aware of it.
As you can imagine, this is a heavy book and nowhere close to plot focused. This is about Jared’s day to day life, with around 3 chapters of flashbacks in the beginning, leading nowhere, to no fantasy elements until around chapter 20 and only hinted to at best. If you want a fantasy, then this book hardly has any and when it is hinted at Jared is often so stoned that the reader isn’t sure if this is a hallucination or if this is fantasy element we have been waited for. Those hints though come very far apart, being forgotten about quickly to go back to Jared taking care of some lost soul, a flashback, and then a kid, either Jared or someone else, getting wasted and puking. Then repeat the entire thing. By the time the plot of him being a trickster’s son, which is hinted at in the beginning to be forgotten until the end, I have lost interest which is the problem I had with this book.
The writing and pacing are so slow that I felt stressed that nothing was happening and I just don’t care about the people enough for me to have the endurance to read, or in my case listen, to them puke their guts out again and hit someone because they didn’t like their face. I also wasn’t as intrigued by once again reading about native Americans who are drunks and especially drug addicts. Much like black people have a stereotype around about being gang members, the native Americans has a stereotype of being drunks and drug addicts. Especially since shamanism and drugs are associated with each other and Eden Robinson are using this stereotype quite heavily. Now considering that the author is a native American herself I can assume she is writing from experience instead of a stereotype but I still felt it leaned too heavily on it for me not to at least mentioning it.
Now, I also dislike the writing style, it isn’t bad but it is a form I used to call, prize winning style. This style is similar to how movies wanting to win golden globe awards or the like follow a certain style, you can almost make a list of things a movie has to have to win an award. The same goes for books which is why most Nobel Prize winners in literature has often a similar style, and the book itself isn’t really the most popular book since the style is often hard to get through.
Eden Robinson has this style so I wouldn’t be surprised if she wins an award but that also means that a large portion of the audience won’t like it. I reached out to some teachers of actual young adults to hear what the intended audience actually thought about this one and from what I can tell, Young Adults don’t like this book. Few are able to get through it and most people who does like it are older. That is common about this style of writing and I have experienced it before. Whether winning awards despite few of the intended audience liking your book is good or bad, well that is another discussion, but it a thought for your mind.
Now, as you can imagine, I didn’t like this book. It isn’t a bad book, just not one suited me. I liked the native American aspect of the story; I liked the main character and the character was deep but it was advertised to me as a fantasy so I expected fantasy in my fantasy book and the book was more a slice of life story than anything else. All in all, I would give this one a 4 out of 10. The magic was more there as an afterthought and that didn’t suit me.
It isn’t the first time I have read this kind of story, growing up poor, I have lived some parts of it, though I refused to go down the same path as the main character and went on to university, I see the real world in the story, but I really didn’t want to. I read books to escape from reality, not to be thrown back into it so frankly, this one did not hit my points. It doesn’t mean that others won’t like it but if you go into it and is hoping for a fast-paced fantasy, then you will most likely be disappointed.
With Kind Regards
Senefer.
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