Elatsoe

Darcie Little Badger
Completed 3/15/2026, Reviewed 3/16/2026
3 stars

This is the first book in the Elatsoe series.  Last year, I read Sheine Lende which is the prequel.  It won last year’s Lodestone Award, the YA novel award presented at the Hugo Ceremony.  Elatsoe was nominated for the 2021 Lodestone but didn’t win.  I thought Sheine Lende was the superior book, richer in world building and character development.  Elatsoe is good, but it wasn’t as rich in the history of the Lipan Apache.  It spent a lot of time recounting the main character’s six times great grandmother’s adventures.  It felt more like info dump than world building.  Still, for a first novel, it’s good.

Elatsoe, shortened to Ellie because people mispronounce her name, is a seventeen-year-old whose cousin Trevor was killed in a single vehicle crash under very suspicious circumstances.  Upon his death, she is visited by his spirit who reveals his murderer and begs her to bring him to justice.  She accedes, investigating the murderer with her bestie, Jay, and the support of her family.  Ellie can raise the spirits of animals from the Underworld, among other gifts.  Her dog is a raised spirit.  She’s very tempted to bring Trevor’s spirit back and is even urged to do so by his widow, but her parents warn her of the danger of the evil that comes back with the spirits of people.  What she uncovers about the murderer unlocks a huge mystery of magic and its abuse by the people in Trevor’s hometown.  She also learns more about her own gifts, her six-great-grandmother’s experience, and their relationships with the Underworld.

Ellie is a pretty cool character.  At seventeen, she’s torn between college and opening a private investigator business where she can use her gifts to help solve mysteries.  She’s smart, funny, and a very responsible teen.  She is asexual, not having any predilection for sexuality, which she declares to Jay.  She has a great relationship with her parents who support her in her exploration of her gifts while teaching her the lessons of her six-great.  There were times, however, when I felt she was a little too good to be true, almost a Mary Sue, with too few flaws and unrealistic cheeriness for a teen on the cusp of adulthood.  Still, it’s hard not to like her.  There’s one poignant scene in a rock souvenir shop where she exhibits her ability to deal with the prejudices of white people.  Again, a little too perfect of a behavior, but it does exhibit how she deals with racism.  

I also liked Jay.  He’s a descendant of the Fae.  He even has pointy ears that are usually covered by his hair.  The relationship between Jay and Ellie was sweet, if a little too sweet.  At their age, I think it would have been more realistic for Jay to have some feelings toward Ellie despite her orientation.  Instead, he’s relegated to a quasi-Gary Sue sidekick.

The overall tone of the book is rather cartoonish.  I rolled my eyes at some of the dialogue because of the language used.  I really bristled when one of the bad guys refers to the “meddling kids.”  That was just too banal for the generations who grew up with Scooby Doo.  It betrays the build-up of tension and makes the confrontation with the evil seem extreme and out of place.  Sheine Lende was also a YA novel, but it worked more effectively from this perspective.

My favorite part of the book was her ability to call to the spirits of animals.  There’s a particularly wild scene with swarms of trilobites.  And who wouldn’t love a ghost mammoth.  No spoilers 😉 It also explores her relationship with the Underworld and compares and contrasts it with her six-great, who was the most skilled wielder of magic in her family history.  

I give this book three stars out of five.  It was a little too juvenile for a book about seventeen-year-olds dealing with mortal danger.  It’s an enjoyable, easy read despite the gruesome climax.  It’s worth reading for context for its prequel, although they can both stand alone.  I do like this alternate-Texas that Little Bear created and am interested in what her future books will explore.