Rhiannon Newman

This is one of the most racist contemporary fiction books I've ever read. I am disgusted by how Charlie Holmberg used her poor understanding of Native American culture to create a racist narrative and then profit off of it. She created a fictional tribe that she constantly maligned by not giving them a voice at all (we only hear one woman say something like "be kind to nature") and describes how their guttural language makes the protagonist uncomfortable. She never translates what they say and basically makes them a prop. She uses the old "Ecological Indian" and "Noble Savage" stereotypes to flesh out and romanticize her white characters that learn this earth magic somehow (she never explains that, which is lazy at best) and then allows these two to perpetuate settler colonialism and "put the earth to sleep" from how it's rebelling against white people extracting resources. It's deeply disturbing and points to how racist Holmberg is. Charlie notes in the about author section that she studied Native American Literature at BYU, which actually says a lot about her and that institution. She should be sincerely ashamed of herself and should be doing everything she can to undo the harm she has caused.