Shaman (2013)

Shaman deserves to be recognized as a classic. I look forward to reading it again someday, and maybe again after that. It has only two shortcomings. First, the narration is so focused on the processes underlying day-to-day survival that at points the descriptions of flint knapping and carcass carving and marching in snow shoes become tedious. And, second, the narrator, the Third Wind, as an elemental presence, relies on a prose style that's both measured and often beautiful, but it fails to register much urgency or generate much suspense.Nevertheless, from the first pages when Loon, the young shaman-in-training, sets out on his "wander," for which he's stripped naked and sent off into the frozen wilderness to make good or starve to death, the story transcends its premises, and Robinson's characters breathe with real life. This isn't a story about European hunter-gatherers trying to survive the Ice Age; it's a coming of age story about Loon, guided by the irritable and irascible older shaman Thorn. The women characters stand mostly at a distance, but a couple of them, Heather, an old medicine woman, and Elga, a foreigner who captures Loon's heart, are perfectly compelling even in their small doses. The neanderthals in this book make only casual appearances, with one exception--and this character, who the humans call Click, is one you'll never forget. Much of the plot is standard rite of passage fare, but several of the scenes have a haunting quality that's like nothing else I've ever read. Even if I never read Shaman again, I'll be taking parts of it with me wherever I go into the foreseeable future.

Wow! loved it.