SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Hunting by Stars by Cherie Dimaline: https://t.co/ofhfhCoMYD
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) December 1, 2021
Short Review: 8.5 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): Follow Up to the Marrow Thieves, in which the group finds themselves split apart when French is captured by a Residential School, which forces him to consider how far he'll go for freedom. Terrifyingly Brutal, a worthy successor to the first book.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) December 1, 2021
2/3
Hunting by Stars is the sequel to indigenous Canadian author Cherie Dimaline's 2017 young adult novel, The Marrow Thieves. The Marrow Thieves was a really strong young adult novel, featuring a dystopian post global warming world where nearly all of humanity has lost their ability to dream...with the exception of those of indigenous descent. And so the story focused on a group of indigenous adults and teens on the run from a world seeking to harvest them for their marrow, as they form a found family and search for peace all the while keeping their old stories and cultures alive. It was a really interesting if tough to read, especially as it showed little interest in obeying classical plot conventions of character development - with main character French wavering quite often as he and his group tries to figure out what to do next. So I was really surprised and pleased to see this sequel pop up after it seemed Dimaline had moved on from this world.
And well, Hunting by Stars is just as strong as its predecessor, and incredibly more brutal with what it portrays - that same found family torn apart when prior main character French finds himself taken to one of the new Residential Schools, where he's given the choice of either having his marrow stolen....or to turn traitor. It splits the narrative into three, following three groups of characters instead of just one, and showcases some brutal treatment of indigenous peoples in ways that will ring very familiar to those aware of both the past and the current present. It's very hard to read at times, but its characters and themes are really well done, making this a worthy successor to the first novel.
Trigger Warning: A significant part of the story takes place in a Residential School, so starvation, torture, brainwashing are all major elements of this story, along with serious racism, just as you should expect after the first book.
Mild Spoilers for The Marrow Thieves, although nothing that will spoil anything that would ruin your enjoyment of that book, is below.
French and his found family thought they had found a place of peace for the moment - at a camp where French's dad turned up, with Miig having rediscovered his husband Isaac, freshly escaped from one of the Residential Schools. French and Rose, still in love, may be planning on going off on their own despite that, but for the moment they seem free from "recruiters" who are searching for indigenous bodies to capture and then harvest for their bone marrow - the bone marrow that possesses the secret to restoring humanity's dreams. And then French went off for a short bit.....
...only to wake up alone for the first time in years, in a pitch black room, with no one but the hallucinations of his mom to keep him company. It's clear immediately what has happened - French has been caught and taken to one of the Residential Schools, to be drained and disposed of.
For French's found family, this discovery is devastating, and the family fractures, with Rose going off with another boy to desperately try to rescue French, and the rest of the family seeking to flee back to the United States, which is by no means safe...but at the very least isn't officially trying to hunt them all. But both paths feature great danger, as many different groups hunt those who still dream, and those groups are no less dangerous for their lack of organization.
And for French, his path offers the gravest choice of all, a choice given by a person long thought lost - his brother, turned into a loyal servant of the Residential School facilities, who offers French a choice for survival - to turn against the first nations peoples amongst whom he has found love and family, and betray them to the schools for their horrifying purposes. How far will French be willing to go in the sake of survival, especially given the alternative is a terrifying and agonizing death?
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The Marrow Thieves wasn't just French's story - it was the story of the whole group of indigneous teens, adults, and single elder that had come together into a family - but it was told entirely from French's point of view, outside of short flashback stories in which other characters told how they came to be. Hunting by Stars splits the narrative up instead, with about 40% of the story being told from French's perspective and most of the other 60% split between Rose's story (which is mostly told from Rose's perspective, but sometimes switches seamlessly into the POV of her companion Derrick) and the story of the rest of the group (whose chapters are labeled "The Family") - there's also a few surprsie points of view near the end. The splitting up shows more perspectives here, and allows Dimaline to showcase a greater variety of horrors of the past and present in this dystopian form....to incredible effect.
Again, Dimaline does an excellent job with her characters to make those terrifying experiences hit incredibly hard. French remains a very believable 17 year old, whose options of being tortured and drained or turning on his own people are both terrible, and who is only more taunted by the person giving him that choice being his long lost biological brother Mitch....who has been brainwashed into believing in the Residential School's mission. Mitch's brainwashed state is so so hard to read from French's perspective, especially as Dimaline never sugarcoats it or goes to the cliché tropes of Mitch being turnable back to the side of his people....after all Mitch has internalized the lessons of the Residential School for years, why would French be able to make him realize what he's actually doing is wrong? And then there's Rose, whose point of view we see directly this time around - Rose was the reckless type in the last book, and her emotions for French make her that again here, as she and Derrick run into a group led by a Native man who has essentially formed a cult around himself (and gets help from a non-binary Native character who Rose convinces to take dark steps to save them).
And then there are the brutally portrayed antagonists, from the people in charge of the Residential School, to the cult leader, to a group of white American moms who are unwilling to accept the limited dreaming that American science can provide for their children and instead envy what the Canadian Residential schools are able to do....and are even more horrifying in how they act in their jealousy. These white women could easily seem like a caricature, and definitely are in some ways, but the ways they each differ in their actions while self-justifying what even some of them know is an atrocity is just incredibly relevant to today's world. And Dimaline rarely lets any of these antagonists off the hook for their awful actions, or suggests that they will really get their appropriate come-uppance (even if not all of them survive).
And by portraying these antagonists' acts as being against the characters Dimaline has spent two books making us care about, it only makes them harder to read, because they do serious damage both physically and mentally to the group that just wants the right to live unmolested. And for the second straight book, while Dimaline doesn't end on a total downer ending - it is a moment of peace for our protagonists which suggests some possibility of happiness - she doesn't suggest there's easy answers for it all either, with French (and some of the others) having to live with some awful choices on his conscience, that he may never be willing to admit too.
So yeah, Hunting by Stars is very good, and very hard to read but very relevant to today, so a worthwhile follow-up to The Marrow Thieves. Very worth your reading.
The Marrow Thieves wasn't just French's story - it was the story of the whole group of indigneous teens, adults, and single elder that had come together into a family - but it was told entirely from French's point of view, outside of short flashback stories in which other characters told how they came to be. Hunting by Stars splits the narrative up instead, with about 40% of the story being told from French's perspective and most of the other 60% split between Rose's story (which is mostly told from Rose's perspective, but sometimes switches seamlessly into the POV of her companion Derrick) and the story of the rest of the group (whose chapters are labeled "The Family") - there's also a few surprsie points of view near the end. The splitting up shows more perspectives here, and allows Dimaline to showcase a greater variety of horrors of the past and present in this dystopian form....to incredible effect.
Again, Dimaline does an excellent job with her characters to make those terrifying experiences hit incredibly hard. French remains a very believable 17 year old, whose options of being tortured and drained or turning on his own people are both terrible, and who is only more taunted by the person giving him that choice being his long lost biological brother Mitch....who has been brainwashed into believing in the Residential School's mission. Mitch's brainwashed state is so so hard to read from French's perspective, especially as Dimaline never sugarcoats it or goes to the cliché tropes of Mitch being turnable back to the side of his people....after all Mitch has internalized the lessons of the Residential School for years, why would French be able to make him realize what he's actually doing is wrong? And then there's Rose, whose point of view we see directly this time around - Rose was the reckless type in the last book, and her emotions for French make her that again here, as she and Derrick run into a group led by a Native man who has essentially formed a cult around himself (and gets help from a non-binary Native character who Rose convinces to take dark steps to save them).
And then there are the brutally portrayed antagonists, from the people in charge of the Residential School, to the cult leader, to a group of white American moms who are unwilling to accept the limited dreaming that American science can provide for their children and instead envy what the Canadian Residential schools are able to do....and are even more horrifying in how they act in their jealousy. These white women could easily seem like a caricature, and definitely are in some ways, but the ways they each differ in their actions while self-justifying what even some of them know is an atrocity is just incredibly relevant to today's world. And Dimaline rarely lets any of these antagonists off the hook for their awful actions, or suggests that they will really get their appropriate come-uppance (even if not all of them survive).
And by portraying these antagonists' acts as being against the characters Dimaline has spent two books making us care about, it only makes them harder to read, because they do serious damage both physically and mentally to the group that just wants the right to live unmolested. And for the second straight book, while Dimaline doesn't end on a total downer ending - it is a moment of peace for our protagonists which suggests some possibility of happiness - she doesn't suggest there's easy answers for it all either, with French (and some of the others) having to live with some awful choices on his conscience, that he may never be willing to admit too.
So yeah, Hunting by Stars is very good, and very hard to read but very relevant to today, so a worthwhile follow-up to The Marrow Thieves. Very worth your reading.
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