Teen Review: The Honeys

“Moon of the Crusted Snow” by Waubeshig Rice is a story about how a small Anishinaabe reserve in Northern Canada experiences a sudden loss of power and communication. This story follows Evan Whitesky, a young adult who becomes self-sufficient throughout this event and helps his community and family survive while the rest of society begins collapsing. Throughout this story, we learn about the original Indigenous ways of survival: their specific hunting rituals, distribution of resources, and the importance of how their community works together. This situation in the reserves starts to break the reserve apart as the electricity is lost, so most of the reserve’s lifestyles have been lost. Adding to the tension, some outsiders from the cities are begging to be let into the reserve, specifically Scott, who creates more problems for the reserve.

The main strength of this book is its detail and accuracy about the Indigenous ways of living before the modern era. This makes the book interesting as we read about the traditions of how Indigenous people survived in the wild and how they used to hunt. Although one weakness of this book is the lack of development in the story about how the power and communications went off, or any backstory on Scott and how he persuades people to join him.

My favorite aspect of this book was the way it shows the society falling apart when we lose access to electricity and communication. I thought that this book highlights the main fact that we all rely on our devices and electricity so much that, without them, we would descend into chaos like a bunch of savages. This was shown when Nik and Isaac, 2 college students, came back to the reserve and explained what was happening in the city and how it was all chaos.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes horror or survival stories near world-ending events. In terms of vibes, it reminded me of the “2012” film, where society is falling apart, but just some group of people can survive. I give this book a solid 3.5/5.