I came to Trail of Lightning (Book 1 of The Sixth World) totally blind. By that I mean I knew virtually nothing about it, except that several folks whose opinion I respect kept telling me to read it. I can take a hint, and they were right, of course. This novel kept surprising me, over and over, page after page.

Here’s what I mean about surprises. It feels like gritty contemporary fantasy at first, set in the American southwest, but then Roanhorse throws a curveball. It turns out Trail of Lightning is set in the future after cataclysmic flooding has changed the world, and life, forever. So, this is first-rate dystopian fiction, the direct result of climate change. But Roanhorse is never didactic, never burdens the reader with pages of info dump and unneeded historical background. She’s too good for that. Instead, she drops the reader headlong into the story and tells us to hang on tight, trusting us to understand what led to this point from context, and it works brilliantly.

Trail of Lightning is set in Dinétah, the former Navajo reservation, a place now walled off from the flooded zones and the rest of civilization that still clings to life. The gods, monsters, and heroes of Native American myth and legend now walk the earth, interacting with the people, causing havoc. Dinétah is a hard, lawless place, and not all the monsters have supernatural origins—some of the worst are of the human variety. Roanhorse’s world-building is exceptional, because it feels organic. She expertly blends the myths and legends into her post apocalyptic world, and makes it all work together. There is fierce imagination at work here.

If Roanhorse excels at anything even more than world-building, it’s her characters. Maggie Hoskie, the monster hunting main character, is a marvel, a hard-ass killer with supernatural powers, flawed but heroic in spite of herself. Setting off on the trail of a missing girl, Maggie finds herself in over her head, confronted by evil both human and monstrous. There are good people who help her along the way, and gods and monsters who want her dead. Roanhorse makes them all, humans and gods in particular, achingly real. The action is non-stop, the violence balletic, the stakes high, and the consequences all too real.

I loved Trail of Lightning, and have already recommended it to several friends. Book 2 of The Sixth World, Storm of Locusts, is available now, and already added to my TBR stack.