Book Review: The Sacred Stones by William Sarabande (The First Americans #5)

 

Let's have a gander a book five. Spoilers ahead.

Many years after the passing of Torka and his tribe, their descendants live in the Red World and and further north. When the People of the Red World meet some People of the Watching Star, all seems well. But the Watching Star hunters and their shaman seem to have ulterior motives. It all comes down to characters like Cha-kwena, as well as the lovely Ta-maya, to keep the Sacred Stones from falling into enemy hands.

This one felt a bit like a nice breath of fresh air. I really didn't like the previous installment in this series, but thankfully this one is a bit lighter (it's still dark, but not as dark) and has a lot more likable main characters than last book. At least here the main characters (except for the villain POVs) aren't constantly committing heinous acts, which was a huge issue for me last book. 

The story was also genuinely good, like I was really invested to see how the world had developed now that humans had lived there for many years. New tribes have formed, old ties and beliefs have been forgotten, mammoths are almost extinct, it feels like a whole new world to explore while also building up which has been set up by the previous arc. Good stuff.

I think the characters were the main draw for me, though. Cha-kwena was a flawed but interesting lead, as were characters like Mah-ree and Ta-maya. There's also a few villain POVs, like mentioned before, but these characters were also genuinely really interesting and well-written. So props to Sarabande for some well-written characters I liked to follow.

So this book I will give a positive rating. However, I do have to finish this review with a note: This will be my last review of a The First Americans book. I read halfway into book six, but it again has the same character devolving and poor writing that happened in book four, and goes into some really dark territory again and it was honestly just taking a mental toll on me to keep reading such depressing and upsetting stuff. 

So I had to DNF book six and will not be picking it up again in the future. I did have plans to read and review the entire series (and own most of it), but I'll be unhauling the books that I own, and will not be continuing my reviews of this series. I did genuinely like some of the books in it, but others are just downright depressing and upsetting and it's not worth the mental toll it was taking on me.

Rating: 4/5