Wednesday, January 25, 2023

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: White Horse by Erika T Wurth

 


White Horse is a horror novel by author Erika T. Wurth, an author of Apache, Chickasaw, and Cherokee descent. The story features a protagonist in Kari, an Urban Native* of similar descent as she begins to have visions of a monster the moment she touches a bracelet with Indigneous* symbols that belonged to her long disappeared mom and follows her as she finds herself forced to investigate (and have visions of) what happened to her mom and what happened in Kari's own tragic past. It's also a story dealing with how the men in Kari's life and the lives of Kari's friends refuse to let women like Kari and her family/friends have their own autonomy and Kari's struggle against that. It's a novel that wasn't on my radar until it was reviewed on the Tor.com blog (horror is something I dabble in but don't love), but intrigued me enough to give it a shot.

*The story uses the word "Indian" in the narrative, which I usually don't use in these reviews (as a White reviewer, unlike the author).*

And White Horse is very very good, even as it gets very dark due to its strong protagonist in Kari, a woman with a ton of baggage who is forced to deal with it all by the visions brought on by a bracelet she didn't even want. Its a story that blends supernatural with real life horrors of abuse, drug, and trauma passed on by it all from generation to generation and it works really well due to how strong the narrative is from the perspective of Kari: a woman whose mother disappeared and whose father is basically comatose and whose best friend overdosed and her next best friend and relative deals with a controlling/emotionally abusive husband who doesn't like Kari. I don't think that the story ever gets kind of scary so if you're looking to be terrified you're not quite in the right place, and it kind of resolves itself a bit too easily in the end, but this is a really well done tale that should very much interest other fantasy/horror fans, especially those looking for ones from a non-white male perspective.

TRIGGER WARNING: Drug Use/Overdosing, Suicidal Ideation/Suicide Attempts, Spousal Abuse/Child Abuse. Nothing gratuitous and well done as part of the narrative, but this book is dealing with serious stuff and it may be very difficult for some readers to read.  


----------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------
Kari doesn't want to think about her past and certainly doesn't want to think about the mother who abandoned her when she was just two days old. She'd rather work her multiple jobs, especially the one at "her" Indian Bar, the White Horse, which she dreams of buying and taking over one day soon, and then when off work she'd rather find some fun with her cousin/friend Debby and take care of her near-comatose father at home. That's always complicated by Debby's asshole husband Jack, who insists that Debby spending any time with Kari is improper and yells and comes near threatening Debby when he finds out, but it is what it is, to Kari's minor dismay. Other than that, there's little Kari would want to change, and she certainly doesn't want to relive her own past.

Yet when Debby brings to Kari at the White Horse a bracelet she found in the attic, a bracelet with Indigenous symbols that belonged to her mother, everything changes. Kari soon starts seeing visions of the mother she never knew and of the best friend Jaime she grew up with and used to drink and party with...and begins having nightmares of the monster whose symbol is on the bracelet. Seemingly losing her mind, Kari is told that the only way to end this plight and stop the monster is to investigate what really happened to her mother, and to find out what her mother's spirit wants her to find.

But in looking back at her mother's past, Kari flashes back to her own history of pain and trauma, not just her ancestors' and soon begins to question if the monster can be stopped at all...or if she's just going crazy....
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White Horse is a novel that is effectively subtle and not subtle at the same time.  It is subtle at times when incorporating its use of indigenous/urban Indian culture - so for example the bracelet features indigenous imagery, an Aunt gives cryptic messages regarding what things mean, and Geronimo and a war club feature in at times, but much of that indigenous heritage and its effect on the story is often left in the background, as Kari has to figure out in the modern world how to deal with her current problems and the forgotten history of her mother.  So we see things like the history of an Indian protest movement (the American Indian Movement - "AIM") that has a large impact on parts of the past, but Wurth trusts the reader to understand how these things affect Kari's life and world as an Urban Indian in a White World. And it's also not subtle at times, what with the supernatural indigenous monster haunting Kari's visions and nightmares, or the awful men around her who abuse their significant others or try to gaslight the women around them.  It's a combination that works really well - and I'm sure I'm explaining it poorly - to make this horror novel chilling in a supernatural and an ordinary way.  

And it works really well because Kari is a tremendously real character who you get to know immensely, better than most characters who star as the protagonists of many novels.  She loves Death Metal, which plays a large part in her narrative, as well as horror novels/movies, which also color her perspective of basically being in a horror novel, with her even visiting the house from The Shining at one significant part of the novel.  And she had a traumatic as hell childhood - with one parent disappeared and the other one essentially comatose after a car accident and requiring her to take care of him, Kari was largely left to fend for herself and wound up doing a ton of drugs with her best friend Jaime...who died as a result of an overdose that Kari feels guilty for not somehow stopping.  The story flashes back often to Kari's and her mother's pasts and it really works to distill how Kari has spent much of her life, even her current life, just trodding forward aimlessly, unable to really grab anything she wants...even the ownership of the White Horse, the one place she feels comfortable.  

And Kari's present problems also include just dealing with a serious of really really shitty men.  There's Jack, Debby's husband whose idea of caring for Debby and the kids is to constantly hound her and scream at her for not taking care of the kids at all times and to be livid at the idea of Debby with Kari all alone - and whom Debby refuses to admit for large parts of the novel might be a problem.  There's a man who turns out to be her grandfather, who she never knew, who insists on gaslighting Kari and in controlling his wife all in the name of that wife (Kari's grandmother Nessie)'s heart problem.  The book doesn't accuse all men of being like this - the bartender Nick is a good guy who just wants to retire and help Kari take over the bar and a friendly cop actually helps out her quest, but Kari has to deal with monsters who are ordinary men as much as supernatural monsters in this book...and the book posits that the two are of equal danger in reality to someone like her.  And in Kari discovering the truth of the past, she begins to find herself in it all and how she is more than someone who has to deal with this abuse and trauma and solitude (and so is Debby), leading to a conclusion that has her in a much better way with a future that is more than just surviving and taking care of her dad.  

This is not an easy book to read - the amount of bad decisions Kari makes, and the bad decisions others make, and drug use and abuse they suffer - it's a rough one for a protagonist you grow to like a ton.  But it largely works with only a few minor issues - it's rarely scary despite being a "horror" novel and more importantly, it ends really abruptly with a third party coming to the rescue to provoke a final confrontation that seems kind of improbable especially given what I know about that entity in real life.  Yet it still works really well in an impressive horror novel even for a person like me who doesn't love horror novels, and I'd definitely recommend it.  

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