Wonderful look into Native American magic and the strength a woman brings to the tribe. ( )

A standard detective story with Native American elements thrown in for local color. Action packed, except for some sections where her opinions on wife abuse, racial prejudice, or sexism were flaunted. A clearly defined Evil, and wrapped up ending are on the plus side. I hate to tag this with Native American as she clearly states that she is not basing that part on reality, but the meme is a large part of the story line, and allows her to include other worldly action.
Not a bad book, but I had been saving this on my TBR as a treat and it did not meet my expectations like her SF/fantasy genre does.
ETA: seeing that this book won awards in Teen categories helps me understand the audience of this novel a little better, tho I also expect more of writers for that age group also. ( )

Standalone. I love it when an author has the sense not to drag a story out and give us a single shot book - I miss single shot fantasy novels. This was a good one. ( )

I couldn't finish it. Honestly, I couldn't even get a quarter of the way into it. It has much the same flavor as her urban fantasy Burning Water, but without the engaging characters or convincing magic system. It didn't help that it has a ton of cultural references scattered everywhere to make it feel "hip" and "modern" but now scream "eighties." (Also? If you lived in Tulsa in the eighties I'm sure plenty of the offhand references will feel very true-to-life, but since I didn't, I just found them tedious and obtrusive.) (It was published in 1994 but I'd bet money it was written at least five if not ten years earlier.) The groveling "please forgive me for appropriating your culture" author's note at the back didn't help, either.

In the grand scheme of things this is pretty early Lackey, and I wouldn't mind seeing what she did with urban fantasy as a mature author working in a maturing genre, but this? This is not worth reading. ( )

This was fun, would LOVE to see more of this character. She has the usual woman doing a man's job problems, but she has fun and she does it in style ( )