September 2022 Review of The Marrow Thieves (The Marrow Thieves #1)

Date-9.4.22

 The Marrow Thieves ( The Marrow Thieves #1)

Written by Cherie Dimaline

About from Goodreads.com

In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors. Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."

Review

Warning might be some spoilers. If you don’t want spoilers please skip down to the Enjoyed section of the review.

    This book is a beautiful piece of art and it is so meaningful. I don’t even know where to start other than who this book makes me feel. This book weighs very heavily on my heart because of all the pain the Indigenous community has dealt with and continues to deal with. This book is absolutely life changing, I feel like EVERYONE needs to read this book. 

This book is filled with many metaphors that are very deep in this book, like the dreams that are being taken away from the Indigenous characters are a metaphor of their actual dreams and passions in real life that are taken from them. 

It also brings up a lot of things they deal with to this day, one thing that was brought up was the schools they were being kidnapped to.  Which is a very real thing. Many people take away their children and force them to go into residential schools that would make them lose their beautiful traditions and even their lives. 

Another thing that was brought up was that one of the characters were stolen and raped. Which happens a lot many Indigenous women are kidnapped and forced into sex trafficking. 

There are so many other things that are brought up that indigenous people deal with like the loss of traditions, families, kidnapping, loss of their land, starvation as well as not having clean drinking water, just to name a few things. 

Enjoyed

• The meaning behind this book

• The Ending 

• That the writer had stories about the tribes different pasts 

• Miig’s story 

• All of the Metaphors 

• The inability to put this book down, for me it was absolutely impossible 

Disliked

• Some parts got a bit boring but I still couldn’t put the book down

Quotes I love

• I’d felt kind of special then, before I knew how dangerous special could be. I guess I was proud of my family, with our ragged shoes and stringy hair; we were still kings among men. I held my twiggy walking stick like a scepter, chin tilted towards the ashy sky.

• He kept a small pouch hung on a shoelace around his neck and tucked into those sweaters. Once, when I’d asked him, he’d told me that was where he kept his heart, because it was too dangerous to keep it in his chest, what with the sharp edges of bones so easily broken- Francis talking about Miig 

• Too many metaphors and stories wrapped in stories. 

• I lowered the rifle. He blinked once more, then crossed his legs, one over the other as if at the start of a curtsey, then turned back into the trees. - Francis and a Moose

 3/5 ⭐️

Recommended to-To everyone

Info

Trigger warning-  Abduction, Cannibalism (mentioned), Oppression, Child death, Pedophilia, Drug and Alcohol use, Rape( Child, Gang)

Spice level-  1/ 5 🌶

Other books in the Series-Hunting by Stars

Publish date-May 2017 

Awards-Young People’s Literature- Text (2017),Kirkus Pride for Young Readers’ Literature (2017), Sunburst Award for Young Adult (2018), American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Young Adult Book (Honor Book (2018)), Governor General’s Literary Awards (2019),  CBC Canada Reads Nominee (2018)

Genres- Sci-Fi, LGBTQ, Indigenous lit, romance