Liked Trickster Drift even more than the first book. Watching Jared start to really embrace becoming an adult and still holding on to his kindness of being young.

The magic and background story telling of the other worldly creatures is amazing. I'd love to read a book about Shu or one about Dent. ( )

After barely getting out of Kitimat alive, Jared heads to Vancouver to get a break from his life, which seems to be spiraling out of control. The supernatural keeps encroaching in his already chaotic life, adding a dimension he neither wants nor knows how to deal with. In Vancouver he reluctantly moves in with his aunt Mave, who appears blissfully unaware of all the magical elements that occupy her apartment. Jared gets caught up in family and community, starts his classes at BCIT, and tries to live a normal life—as normal as it can be while trying to stay sober and avoiding his sadistic stalker. But, just as everyone around him has been warning him, the supernatural, which he has been dabbling in without even knowing it, catches up to him, and by the end of the story it is pretty clear his life will never be the same again. I love this story because the characters are so vivid, utterly believable and real, like they could be my own neighbours. Jared is an incredibly strong and resourceful kid, making his way through a complicated and often unforgiving life. I look forward to the final volume of this trilogy, as Jared applies his natural resiliency to a whole new set of circumstances. ( )

The paranormal was introduced at the end of the first book, but it has a starring role in this book. Believe it or let it be part of the fiction, either way this book is pretty intense with drama and sh*t in Jared's life, like the first except different drama and a (mostly) new cast of characters. It is easy to see why this is a tv show -- limited cast of characters who are all quirky and colourful with their own baggage and most of the scenes take place in the apartment or random streets. Spooky ghosts are straightforward to CGI, and there you have the book on screen. Very readable in terms of the writing, and it pulled me through again, even though I couldn't relate (thankfully). ( )

While I didn’t like this as much as the first one, I think it’s my usual sequel/middle-of-a-trilogy problem more than anything. You know, how the second book isn’t nearly as shiny because you know how the writer and world operate now? How the second in a trilogy often picks up in the middle and ends in the middle and doesn’t quite give you resolution? Yeah.

The writing’s about the same, from what I remember, though the story’s less raw because Jared’s gotten away from the substance abuse and dysfunctional home life that made it so. He’s still a jerk, still unlearning things, still messed up by his childhood and confused in a believably seventeen-year-old way and not dealing very well with the whole magic thing at all—so there’s plenty of mouthing off and doing dumb things and moments when he slips back into old patterns. I enjoyed how much he’d grown since the first book, and watching him grow more in this one, but that gut-wrenching “oh gods no what happens now” feeling I remember from Son of a Trickster wasn’t there.

There’s more humour, too, mostly in the form of absolutely wacky characters. A dance instructor who used to babysit him, a five-year-old with a fixation on Frozen and her cheeky ghostly follower, the twin gamers who show up anywhere there’s free food, his highly intense writer-activist aunt, and more…. Watching them all bounce off Jared, and each other, was wonderful, and I hope some of them come back because they were fun.

The story’s very subtle, though, which I never deal with well while I’m in the thick of it. Like, for most of it, all I saw was Jared going about daily life and helping people and going to school and freaking out over ghosts, with brief moments of “look, there’s a problem here,” and some of the magical stuff near the end was very sudden for me. But like with Son of a Trickster, once I got to the end and looked back, things gelled. To sum up: Robinson is essentially updating Heiltsuk mythology for the 21st century, specifically the Raven cycle, but not playing by Western literary rules to do so. I think I’m missing a lot of the details of what exactly she’s doing because I’m white and largely familiar with other Raven traditions (mostly Haida), but I still think what she’s doing is cool.

And then the climax happened and Robinson doubled down on the magical everything. Shit got real. Fast. And bad. I’m going to have to read the third book just to be sure Jared’s okay in the end.

So … I don’t know if I can rec this book specifically, because it starts too much in the middle of everything and it left me just a bit too ambivalent, but I did like it and I certainly recommend the trilogy.

Warnings: Stalking. Addiction, drug use, and alcoholism. Depression. Mentions of self-harm and residential schools. Seriously terrible driving. Awkward moments with professors.

7/10 ( )

That was definitely a cliffhanger ending. I hope we're not waiting for book 3 for too long.

Poor Jared. He's trying so hard to be a normal, productive, boring member of regular society, and yet every event conspires to make him more magical and powerful.

The characters are incredible (literary novels could be written about each of them and they'd be fully compelling with or without magic), the dialogue is gorgeous, the magic is incredible, and the story is just perfection. ( )