Kindle Book Review: "The Blessing Way" by Tony Hillerman

"The Blessing Way" by Tony Hillerman
4 Faerie Points

The mystery aspect of this book was weak in many ways because it felt that he handed us the killer on a silver platter, so there wasn't a lot of guessing as to why the characters were in the dire situations that they found themselves in, but what greatly enhances the rating of this particular book is the sheer immersion into Native American culture that it contains. Hillerman does an excellent job of making these scenes feel authentic, which is important when someone is not totally related to the culture like Hillerman (Hillerman is a white male, but was raised around the Navajo culture in his youth according to additional content in the kindle edition.)

The book tends to focus to heavily on a side character in this first book of Leaphorn, but I imagine it was because he was originally just a side character that wasn't supposed to be that prominent at all in the book but Hillerman was asked to make him a bigger character by his editor. I imagine in the subsequent novels featuring him that he has more of a role and prominence. If you can get past this fact since it is the first novel in the series then you will greatly enjoy what he produces here.

As previously stated the mystery aspect is a little obvious and the moments are not that shocking when certain revelations occur. This still makes the mystery aspect of the book fine in my opinion because not every mystery needs to be a guessing game for the reader. Sometimes it needs to be handing them all the pieces so they can focus on other aspects of the novel, which as stated I think the Native American aspects were what needed to be focused in on in this first novel in the series, so we had a grasp on what the rest of the series would look like. It wasn't the best book I have read this year, but it was a quick read that I completed in one day, which makes it a great book in my opinion because you don't have to sit with it for a long period of time. You can just have a new experience with a new culture in the matter of one day!