The Last Stand of Mary Good Crow

The Crystal Calamity, Book 1

By: Rachel Aaron

Narrated by: Naomi Rose-Mock

Deadwood meets The Lord of the Rings in this epic fantasy of the West!

Hungry darkness, haunted guns, tunnels that move like snakes—the crystal mines of Medicine Rocks, Montana, are a place only the bravest and greediest dare. Discovered in 1866, the miraculous rock known as crystal quickly rose to become the most expensive substance on the planet, driving thousands to break the treaties and invade the sacred buffalo lands of the Sioux. But mining crystal risks more than an arrow in the chest. The beautiful rock has a voice of its own. A voice that twists minds and calls unnatural powers.

A voice that turns men into monsters.

Mary Good Crow hears it. Half White, half Lakota, rejected by both, she’s forged a new life guiding would-be miners through the treacherous caves. To her ears, the crystal sings a beautiful song, one the men she guides would gladly burn her as a witch for hearing. So, when an heiress from Boston arrives with a proposition that could change her life, Mary agrees to push deeper into the caves than she’s ever dared.

But there are secrets buried in the Deep Caves that even Mary doesn’t know. The farther she goes, the closer she gets to the voice that’s been calling her all this time. A voice that could change the bloody story of the West or destroy it all.

©2022 Rachel Aaron (P)2022 Rachel Aaron

Worth a credit

Story is enjoyable and well-told. Narrator is a bit monotone and adds nothing to the reading.

I wanted to love it.

I’m a big fan of Rachel Aaron overall but I had to tap out of this book. It’s well written and seemed like it was going in a cool direction. Ultimately, it was the constant use of racial slurs in dialogue by the characters that forced me to stop reading. It’s all historically accurate and I think makes an important statement about the time but as a bipoc person myself it was just too much to listen to.

I’m still a fan of Ms. Aaron but I’m going to skip this series.

What a great story!

I am a huge Rachel Aaron fan and as usual, she checks all the boxes. Beautiful descriptions, interesting characters with different motives and storylines, a villain you didn't expect....allllll that good stuff.

I loved Reliance- she is the most interesting character to me but Mary is a close second. She will be a big player in the next book for sure, a perfect good vs. evil plot device. Josie was interesting enough, she is smart and passionate and adds a good balance.

I personally, am not a huge fan of western stories, only because I find them a bit boring for world-building and it isn't a landscape I would want to vacation to. The story dragged for me at times because they didn't go anywhere besides the caves and town. Despite that, each location had a lot going on and I wasn't bored...just couldn't visualize it as well. Which I firmly believe is my personal tastes and not the fault of the author.

I am also not very familiar with indigenous culture and this made for an enlightening read, my only regret is not seeing Custers demise on the page...I bet it was glorious.

it's really wasn't that bad, waiting for the next.

I really wanted to love it, this authors Heartstriker series and the other DFZ books were so good... so, so, SO good I've recommended them to several others but then she did some other project under a nomme de plume that I couldn't get into, so even though this sounded really good I was hesitant... so it IS all over the place at first and hard to follow along and the characters are all kind of annoying-- but the premise behind it is intriguing and it did suck me in. I'll await the next in the series to make up my mind-- which is better than the other book she wrote that i couldn't get past like the second chapter and returned... I'll revisit the DFZ until then...

SIDE NOTE: The narrator wasn't awful. by the end of the book i could differentiate characters, but in the beginning all their voices sounded so similar it made it more confusing... but I've definitely heard worse.

Good story

Interesting characters, hero’s and villains.love the premise of the crystal! Hope there will be more than 2 books!