Reindeer Moon

A stand-alone fantasy set in the Paleolithic Age.

Yanan is a young girl living with a small group of people, including her mother, father, and little sister Meri. They live in tundra where part of the year their world is covered in snow and survival becomes even more of a struggle than during the summer. The people have to rely on each other and work hard to survive. Most of their days are spent setting traps, hunting (and often coming back empty handed), and gathering berries, roots, and even pine corns to eat. Because the group have several people, some of them have the time and energy to make clothing, too. It's written in first person.

This is Yanan's coming of age story. She's a willful girl whose life isn't easy, admittedly sometimes because she defies customs and is punished for it. The people she lives with form an extended family and it's important to get along with everyone. But that's not easy for a teenager.

The book has some fantasy elements, too. In the second chapter Yanan reveals to us that when she died, her group's shaman (her aunt Teal) captured her spirit so that Yanan could help her people after death, too. She can take the form of an animal and rematerialize into the world. As an animal, she needs to eat and sleep, and mates sometimes, too. Teal and the group's other shaman command her to help the tribe but it seem to me that the spirits can't really do much. The group has another servitor spirit who was also part of the tribe before he died. However, when the sprits take animal form, they often seem to forget who they are and just live as animals until the shamans call them back.

The authors has done a lot of research and notes the sources at the back. I think it's an excellent glimpse into the world where our ancestors could have lived in (excluding the magic, of course).