White Buffalo Calf Warriors

Title: White Buffalo Calf Warriors
Author: Rose Christo
Cover artist:
Publisher: Self Published
Amazon: White Buffalo Calf Warriors
Genre: contemporary YA gay romance
Length: 330 pages
Rating: 4.25 stars out of 5

A guest review by Sirius.

Summary: A road trip of two charming characters who fall in love while trying to bring Hot Cookie home and make world peace come faster

Blurb:

The Milk River Cree tribe has an age-old prophecy: When the white buffalo herd returns to America, world peace will follow. After years of raising buffalo, the Milk River Reservation has finally bred a single white calf. And the calf has gone missing.

Ne’er-do-well Tommy Little Moon is on a mission: Find the errant white buffalo before hunters do. When Tommy’s pickup truck breaks down outside the New Order Amish community, Tommy has no choice but to accept aid from brash blockhead Micah Miller. Tommy and Micah have three months to find the white buffalo before she breaches the international border. If they can manage not to kill each other, that is.

Review:

“They’ve been saying it for ages,” Kookum said.

“And ages, and ages. When I was a little girl, but even before that. When the white buffalo herd comes back,” Kookum said, “when that herd comes back, there will be peace everywhere on old planet. It at starts with America; and then it spreads out. People will come together in ways they never have before. Everyone will see each other for family. Peace,” Kookum said. “A brand new beginning for this old world”.

Tommy frowned dubiously. “I don’t think the world’s ready for that,” he said. “Just look at the quinoa market. Markets stealing from the tribes down south…”

I fell in love with Rose Christo’s writing ever since I discovered her “Gives light” series. I pretty much had been buying all of her new stories – I will probably start getting more selective eventually, because not all of them end well, but I really enjoy her writing and have not regretted reading any of them.

You can see from the blurb that this book is about two young men chasing a white buffalo named Hot Cookie because she is so rare and she can bring the world peace and Tommy’s people really do not want her to get killed by the hunters. The writer is a Native American (I believe that she lists her heritage as half Cree on her blog) so of course I am going to defer to her and not question as to how authentically the life of Tommy’s tribe is portrayed. I was just eager and interested to learn more. I also wanted to read a building romance because I thought she was awesome at portraying emotions between the guys in her other books.

I did enjoy the story. I thought it was a light hearted, wise and often funny journey of two boys from different cultures, coming together, learning a lot about each other and from each other and of course falling in love. We see how much Tommy’s heritage and Micah’s heritage formed their personalities , but we also see how they are different from their families and I came to love both young men as distinct characters. I loved Tommy – a vulnerable but such a strong soul who shared with Micah and the readers so many interesting legends and mythos of his people. I also really liked Micah’s strength and his confusion about the ways of the world around him, but also eager to learn more. I thought  they had a great chemistry together.

Having said that, I guess I put too much emphasis on the part of the blurb which talks about them surviving the journey if they manage not to kill each other because I thought the story was mostly lacking in tension. I mean, I expected at least some clash of the cultures when Micah and Tommy had to spend a lot of time together . I definitely thought that they went through a journey of learning about their cultures and themselves, but I did not feel that any disagreement between them had long lasting repercussions on their relationship. It usually ended very fast, often humorously. I got the same feeling from the interactions between their families. Even though I liked how their communications were written, I just felt that coming together was a little too easy. I did think that the humor was great though.

“Answer me truthfully,” interrupted the pixie woman, who must have been Mrs. Little Moon, her unfortunate lineage taken into account. “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely is your son to eat mine?” I beg your pardon?” Esther said bluntly.”

I just want to be very clear that I am not criticizing the lack of angst in this story, and the word criticism is relative in this context. I foresee rereading this one and more than once when  I will need a comfort read. But if you have  read “Gives light”  I thought every page of  the first book was vibrating with tension and I have not noticed that in this story, that’s all.

I liked so many supporting characters in this book – mothers, brothers, sisters of the main characters, they were all memorable and interesting.  And I really liked the message about our life being a shared experience and about surviving together being easier than alone.

Recommended.