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A review by brittaniethekid
The Ballad of Crow & Sparrow by V.L. Locey, V.L. Locey
4.0
This book had a lot of interesting ideas, some good and some bad, but it accumulated into a very sweet romance with enough drama and heartache to keep me interested.
Crow is a recently orphaned mixed-race 14 year old who lives in the White Mountains of Arizona. When out checking his hunting traps, he finds a man who is on the brink of death from an infected gunshot wound. Crow is able to nurse the man back to health but it takes a full season. When the snows melt, this John convinces Crow to travel with him south to somewhere in a desert canyon to meet up with his "family" - who turn out to be a band of outlaws. While Crow refuses time and again to participate in any of the illegal activities, which are mainly train and wagon robbing, he does live with them for years, helping by being a hunter and tracker since he had these skills already. However, he reaches adulthood and John convinces Crow to take part in a kidnap/robbery plan to "keep the body count low" due to Crow having more of a moral compass than the rest of the men. But he's shot on purpose by one of the men both out of racism and opportunity but survives and ends up saving Spencer, the son of the railroad owner who is travelling home on the train, and who is kidnapped for ransom. This is all within the first 40% or so of the book - the rest is Crow and Spencer (his "Sparrow" of the title) trying to survive in the Arizona wilderness with a few more action scenes pushing the story forward.
There are a few issues with the story that forces the reader to stretch reality a bit to make sense, despite the plot being firmly set in a realistic historical setting.
Firstly, it's not explained why his father moved them to the White Mountains, into a very isolated cabin. Crow is half Mohawk (from the New York/Canada area) and French Canadian. The Mohawk side of him doesn't really matter particularly, and the author could have easily made him Navajo, Gila, or Apache who actually lived in that area. I can only assume they know more about Mohawk traditions or something that made it more comfortable for them to write about but it didn't really make sense to me. They also never mentioned these tribes and the characters never encounter another Native person in the book, which seems odd, especially when the book takes us into fictional towns on the 1800s frontier. There are only passing comments about people being randomly attacked by "Indians".
The dialogue is also a little stilted, but I chalked that up to English not being Crow's first language - his father speaking mostly French - and it's surprising he knows English at all. He also doesn't know the Mohawk language or culture since his mother died when he was very young. This doesn't make sense for the other characters, however, especially Spencer. Spencer is a white formally and internationally educated rich young man so his language would be very "normal" to today's readers, if a little hoity toity. He uses words that Crow asks him to explain but his sentence structure isn't that different from Crow's - obviously something to do with the writer's skills in writing dialogue rather than a character feature.
Additionally, many of Crow's dreams described in the book take place entirely in a Mohawk-inspired mythical world with what I assume is his mother. You can assume the fact he's dreaming like this is because of his mother's spirit visiting him in a dreamworld but it is a little bit of a stretch in a non-fantasy book, especially when the dreams seem to be all in the Mohawk language with things Crow would have no familiarity with. In reality, Crow's dreams would more likely be in French and in a more Western world because that's what he's familiar with.
These issues may seem huge to some readers but honestly, they didn't bother me enough for take me out of the story. I really enjoyed the sweet romance, Arizona frontier setting, and action sequences so it's still 4 stars for me.
Crow is a recently orphaned mixed-race 14 year old who lives in the White Mountains of Arizona. When out checking his hunting traps, he finds a man who is on the brink of death from an infected gunshot wound. Crow is able to nurse the man back to health but it takes a full season. When the snows melt, this John convinces Crow to travel with him south to somewhere in a desert canyon to meet up with his "family" - who turn out to be a band of outlaws. While Crow refuses time and again to participate in any of the illegal activities, which are mainly train and wagon robbing, he does live with them for years, helping by being a hunter and tracker since he had these skills already. However, he reaches adulthood and John convinces Crow to take part in a kidnap/robbery plan to "keep the body count low" due to Crow having more of a moral compass than the rest of the men. But he's shot on purpose by one of the men both out of racism and opportunity but survives and ends up saving Spencer, the son of the railroad owner who is travelling home on the train, and who is kidnapped for ransom. This is all within the first 40% or so of the book - the rest is Crow and Spencer (his "Sparrow" of the title) trying to survive in the Arizona wilderness with a few more action scenes pushing the story forward.
There are a few issues with the story that forces the reader to stretch reality a bit to make sense, despite the plot being firmly set in a realistic historical setting.
Firstly, it's not explained why his father moved them to the White Mountains, into a very isolated cabin. Crow is half Mohawk (from the New York/Canada area) and French Canadian. The Mohawk side of him doesn't really matter particularly, and the author could have easily made him Navajo, Gila, or Apache who actually lived in that area. I can only assume they know more about Mohawk traditions or something that made it more comfortable for them to write about but it didn't really make sense to me. They also never mentioned these tribes and the characters never encounter another Native person in the book, which seems odd, especially when the book takes us into fictional towns on the 1800s frontier. There are only passing comments about people being randomly attacked by "Indians".
The dialogue is also a little stilted, but I chalked that up to English not being Crow's first language - his father speaking mostly French - and it's surprising he knows English at all. He also doesn't know the Mohawk language or culture since his mother died when he was very young. This doesn't make sense for the other characters, however, especially Spencer. Spencer is a white formally and internationally educated rich young man so his language would be very "normal" to today's readers, if a little hoity toity. He uses words that Crow asks him to explain but his sentence structure isn't that different from Crow's - obviously something to do with the writer's skills in writing dialogue rather than a character feature.
Additionally, many of Crow's dreams described in the book take place entirely in a Mohawk-inspired mythical world with what I assume is his mother. You can assume the fact he's dreaming like this is because of his mother's spirit visiting him in a dreamworld but it is a little bit of a stretch in a non-fantasy book, especially when the dreams seem to be all in the Mohawk language with things Crow would have no familiarity with. In reality, Crow's dreams would more likely be in French and in a more Western world because that's what he's familiar with.
These issues may seem huge to some readers but honestly, they didn't bother me enough for take me out of the story. I really enjoyed the sweet romance, Arizona frontier setting, and action sequences so it's still 4 stars for me.