Book Review: Elatsoe

By: Zhendi C., Grade 10

Disappointed.

I’ve always been interested in young adult stories about mythic creatures, otherworldly figures, and interactions between the real world and the imagined characters. One of my favorites was A Snake Falls to Earth, also by the same author as this book. But reading that one was so different. Before saying about the parts I feel that Elatsoe is not good enough, let’s first talk about the good side that I enjoy.

Elatsoe is set on “another America” where normal life still exists, except there’s an imaginary world that's full of spirits, ghosts, and creatures, co-existing with the real world, called the underworld. Our protagonist Ellie lives in a lovely family. She has a spiritual dog called Kirby that can sense danger. The story begins with a lot of information, including that the real world has some sort of magic, Ellie has some power to wake up the dead from the underworld (passed down from her ancestors), Ellie’s cousin Trevor was dead, Trevor told Ellie in her dream that he was murdered by Dr. Allerton, a famous therapist that helped thousands of people, and waking up human ghosts are extremely dangerous. From Chapter 3 and on basically everything was surrounding Trevor’s death. Some side plots in this story are mainly about introducing how this world works, and more importantly about Ellie’s grandparents, called the Six-Great, who have lots of supernatural power to wake up the dead. After loads of introductions, Ellie starts to investigate with her friend Jay about Trevor’s death, manages to find out the truth, encounters a huge problem when Trevor’s spirit takes revenge, saves the town from being slaughtered by Trevor (yes, not the antagonist), punishes Dr. Allerton, and eventually takes a happy ending.

Very average plot, but I kinda enjoy it! Though it’s mostly because of the topic about mystery creatures. There’re some really well written parts about this “another America”. One of them is about Kirby’s “Big Howl” ability. That’s why there was this “Howl Incident” mentioned earlier in the book, where Kirby barked uncontrollably until the glass broke. Then towards the end, it’s this ability that saved Ellie, which shows a strong connection between each page. The long description of the surroundings when Kirby howled was magnificent, and I enjoy reading similar parts. The interactions between Ellie and other scary characters were also nicely done, building up tension as well as pushing forward the plot. Also the illustration of the underworld when Ellie accidentally got in was so vivid that I felt the underworld appear in front of my eyes. There’re whales, mammoths, wolves, coyotes, vampires, bats, and so much more creatures depicted. The myth of her grandparent was a mystery for Ellie to solve, and she can learn more about how to connect to the underworld as the story progresses. I liked the way it alternated between real and imaginary, plus the way of describing the emotion for each character. When Kirby didn’t make it back to the real world (he made it back eventually because apparently this is young adult fiction and the author wants a happy ending and I was like what the hell), I felt empathy too because I once had a cat but then our family moved away and at that time I often called my cat but then realized he’s gone. The part at the very end when a coyote woman spoke with Ellie and shared her thoughts with Ellie was lovely. Nice.

Okay, that seems good. However, although this book did a really good job on picturing an imaginary underworld, it did a terrible job doing storytelling and ensuring the story flows smoothly. Some examples I honestly don’t enjoy are as follows.

• There’s a cool concept called fairy rings or something that acts like a portal that can transport you from place to place. I almost thought it’s an important clue towards the ending (like the Howl Incident), but it was never really used in the main plot.
• Six-Great’s adventure stories were never connected to the plot, only acting as background info. I was really looking forward to reading more about that, but unfortunately the author thinks this is unnecessary.
• Ellie’s mother’s name, Vivian, was only shown long after her mother entered the story. This causes a lot of name mismatch. It seems like the author knows this but doesn’t fix the beginning, instead wrote “Ellie’s mother said”, and later wrote “Vivian said” for each of her dialogue.
• The ending was really confusing. It’s like chaos. It’s not clear who’s doing what and what are the sides. It doesn't make sense that Trevor takes revenge and wants to kill everyone, and then Ellie temporarily “saves” Dr. Allerton, but then exiled Dr. Allerton to the underworld later.
• Soooo many side stories. You’ll see in this book, Ellie is doing something, then thought of her grandmother’s stories, she did something, and then thought of another story, and in that story someone dreamed of another story. The story structure is so inconsistent and unclear.
• To me, there’s a “page turner point” for each book, and that’s when an important clue is revealed and you suddenly get motivated to read through the rest of the book in a day. For this book, it’s on page 233, it reveals that Dr. Allerton had the ability to move injuries to other people. This is the absolute climax which tells you how Dr. Allerton healed so many people easily, what’s the magic he had, and solved a lot of mysteries. But after that the story doesn’t go the way I want. There’s no tension, no imminent danger to prepare, no surprises. They even ate lunch first. The pace was magnificently slowed down. I tried to think it’ll get better as I flip the pages, but my patience just got cooked, and it becomes worse and worse. The ending, again, so confusing, unclear, abrupt, 
• Childish literary devices and unnecessary details just to get more words in this book. A part I remembered clearly was like when Ellie bought a $5 thing, she gave $20, and describes “the cashier gave the item, a $5 bill and a $10 bill to Ellie”. I mean yes thank you, you taught me 20-5=5+10.

I still recommend reading this book. Just don’t expect to see this as “a masterpiece of Darcie Little Badger”. I’m planning to go into the sequel (or prequel, if you ignore the time of publication) of this book called Sheine Lende. Hope something will change~