Killer of Enemies

Written by Joseph Bruchac

Narrated by DeLanna Studi

This is not a once upon a time story

Years ago, seventeen-year-old Apache hunter Lozen and her family lived in a world of haves and have-nots. There were the Ones—people so augmented with technology and genetic enhancements that they were barely human—and there was everyone else who served them.

Then the Cloud came, and everything changed. Tech stopped working. The world plunged back into a new steam age. The Ones’ pets—genetically engineered monsters—turned on them and are now loose on the world.

Fate has given Lozen a unique set of survival skills and magical abilities that she uses to take down monsters for the remaining Ones, who have kidnapped her family.

But with every monster she kills, Lozen’s powers grow, and she connects those powers to an ancient legend of her people. It soon becomes clear to Lozen that she is meant to be more than a hired-gun hunter.

Lozen is meant to be a hero.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889561378

Joseph Bruchac

Joseph Bruchac is the author of Skeleton Man, The Return of Skeleton Man, Bearwalker, The Dark Pond, and Whisper in the Dark, as well as numerous other critically acclaimed novels, poems, and stories, many drawing on his Abenaki heritage. Mr. Bruchac and his wife, Carol, live in upstate New York, in the same house where he was raised by his grandparents. You can visit him online at www.josephbruchac.com.

Reviews for Killer of Enemies

[junipersun · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Action packed tale that requires suspension of belief, but fun escapism anyway. Can a teen-aged woman really be that strong? Can someone living in such an oppressive place be so intelligent?I kept trying to make connections between the main character and the almost-nothing I know about the historical Lozen. I hope sequels give us sources (or that the print book contains sources I didn't hear in the audio version--knowing Bruchac, that is likely).At some point, I started getting tired of the many varied monsters that kept popping up. Fortunately the focus began to shift from just monster-slaying to actually making a change in the lives of those trapped in the "work camp".

[jennybeast · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lozen has a great voice, and this post-apocalyptic story is altogether excellent. I really love how Bruchac seamlessly weaves the Apache background of his character into the larger tale -- using it to illustrate and reflect, to provide ideas and to explain survival mechanisms. It's really great. Also, Sasquatch! Yes!

[reader1009-863136 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

teen adventure/sci-fi/fantasy/dystopia with Native American heroine (by the award-winning Joseph Bruchac). (reviewed from ARC)

[rivkat_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lozen is named for the Killer of Enemies and used as a hunter/stalking horse by the elites who’ve imprisoned what remains of her family in their post-apocalyptic compound. (The elites survived the Cloud, which destroyed everything electronic and battery-driven in the world, and now run tiny fiefdoms, half-crazed by what they’ve lost and by their genetic modifications.) Lozen has a plan to get her family free, but it’s complicated by a cute boy and by the psychic powers she’s starting to suspect she has. Suffered from comparison to Rebecca Roanhorse’s book, which is also about a young woman in a post-apocalyptic southwestern landscape using tribal powers to fight monsters awakened by the apocalypse; Bruchac seems to be writing for a slightly younger audience than Roanhorse, with lots of exclamation points, which also didn’t help me as a reader.

[maowangvater · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Lozen has a very dangerous job. Kill the monsters and return to Haven alive. Before the collapse of civilization Haven was known as Southwestern Penitentiary. For Lozen and her family who are held as hostages, it’s still a prison that she wants desperately to escape. The Ones who rule the compound are determined to keep their serfs inside and under their complete control. But they haven’t reckoned on some special abilities that Lozen has inherited from her Chiricahua Apache ancestors. In addition, while outside hunting monsters, she’s encountered a couple of powerful nonhuman friends. This is a fast paced tale of adventure, struggle and survival.

[pwaites_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Killer of Enemies is a pleasantly entertaining YA book about an Apache heroine who kills monsters.A mysterious event causes all electronics to stop working, plunging the world into disaster. Prior to the cataclysmic event, the Ones (the elite rulers) had created genetically manipulated pets for themselves. Freed of their electric fences, these monsters are now roaming the earth.Lozen’s the official monster killer for a walled town run by four insane Ones. Lozen does not occupy this position of her own free will, but the Ones are holding her family hostage. She has to keep killing the ever more dangerous beasts they send her after, all the while plotting for a way to free her family.At the beginning, I had some trouble with Killer of Enemies due to it’s choppy prose. Either the writing improved, or I got enough into it that it stopped bothering me after a while.Killer of Enemies doesn’t have a particularly strong plot – this is certainly an action driven novel. The majority of the book is about Lozen out in the field, killing enemies. This was basically an action movie in book form.Lozen’s Apache heritage was very important to the book as a whole, and it’s what helps make it something beyond a simple action novel. Her heritage is always at the forefront of the story in more ways than one. For instance, Lozen recounts Apache folktales, using them to find tactics to kill the latest monster.Lozen was a solid lead character. She was fairly restrained in her few interactions with others, but her inner narration is filled with her judgements, memories, and hopes. She was smart, capable, and a complete badass!However, she was pretty much the only developed character. Since so much of the book is her alone in the wilderness, no other character really has the page time to become anything more than one dimensional.I liked how romance was not the focus of the story. Killer of Enemies avoided much of the romantic angst that the Young Adult genera seems infected with. There was sort of a romance subplot, but it was very minimal and probably shouldn’t have been included at all. Lozen’s center of attention is her family, and no love interest is going to change that.Killer of Enemies is on the borderlines of genres. It’s primarily post-apocalyptic and dystopian, but it includes fantasy elements such as Lozen’s ability to read people’s minds and sense when danger is near. However, Killer of Enemies is at risk for introducing too many elements. While I thought most things worked, the vampires felt really out of place (why does every YA book need vampires?). However, the other monsters where very well done.I’d recommend Killer of Enemies to anyone looking for a fast, action driven story with a unique female lead.Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

[nbmars · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Lozen, 17, bears the same name as her forebear, a warrior of the Chiricahua Apache. [Per Wikipedia, the original Lozen, born in the late 1840s, was, legends held, able to use her powers in battle to learn the movements of the enemy. According to Alexander B. Adams in his book Geronimo, "she would stand with her arms outstretched, chant a prayer to Ussen, the Apaches’ supreme deity, and slowly turn around. ... By the sensation she felt in her arms, she could tell where the enemy was and how many they numbered.”]Lozen in the book has similar abilities. She and her family live in a dystopian prison called “Haven” in the Sonoran desert in “New America.” The world changed after a giant magnetic cloud descended that permanent cut off the possibility of any electronics. It also meant that many of the former ruling classes, most of whom had electronic physical enhancements, died. As Lozen recalled, “The most important men and women who chaired the three great corporate nation-states of New America, Euro-Russia, and Afro-Asia all perished painfully, quickly, and dramatically."In addition, all of the Gemods, or genetically modified creatures that filled the pleasure parks of the powerful, were no longer confined by electric fences. They ran free and terrorized populations. Safety was found only behind large guarded walls, like the former penitentiary now serving, involuntarily, as the home of Lozen and her family.Lozen was captured by those now in power, or The Ones, because of her ability as a “monster hunter.” She can sense the Gemods and outwit them with her skills. But she hunts and kills in the manner of her ancestors, making sure to respect her enemies and asking the creature’s spirit for forgiveness for taking its life. And Lozen is no girly-girl. After a kill, she cuts out the heart, says a few old Chiricahua words, and eats it raw. She lives by the variation of the Chiricahua variation of the Twenty-third Psalm taught to her by her murdered Uncle Chatto:"Yea, though I walk through the Valley of DeathI will fear no evilfor a I am the meanest son of a bitchin this whole damn valley.”Holding her family hostage, the Ones keep sending her out on more and more dangerous missions. Lozen has several advantages though, about which the Ones are ignorant. The first is that she has recently developed the ability to read thoughts. It doesn’t always happen, but started not long after the cloud arrived, and has served her well, facilitating her survival. A second is that she can sometimes communicate with ancient Native spirits. They help her and guide her. But will it be enough? Her ultimate goal is to escape with her family and the attractive boy her age who works in the gardens. She doesn’t know exactly what that would mean - to be out in the open, but she knows that they won’t survive unless they leave.What I Liked:A Native American for the heroine, and a fierce one at that (although she thinks a bit too much like a male to be totally convincing to me).All the information about Apache lore, and the landscape around the Chiricahua Mountains. These beautiful “sky islands” are in Arizona near Tucson and are known for the massive “hoodoos” or stone columns that make the terrain so unique. What I Didn’t Like:Menaces include “The Bloodless” or a vampire-like group of people - really? Weren’t the giant genetically constructed animal monsters enough?The writing isn’t exceptional.Evaluation: This is a post-apocalyptic dystopia novel that is also a tribute to the spirituality of Native Americans, and is a welcome contribution to diversity in this (or any!) genre. Once again, one must give kudos to Lee & Low for continuing to publish books by and about people of color.

[babinns · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

When I was young, I read Andre Norton’s science fiction books featuring Native American protagonists. I have missed that combination. Until now. Killer of Enemies by Joseph Bruchac, is set in a dystopian future, in the days A. C., after The Cloud descends on Earth, destroying electricity and all forms of advanced technology. Lozen, the teen heroine, is an Apache named after her ancestor, a 19th century warrior woman who battled alongside Geronimo. She is skilled at hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship and wilderness survival, and blessed with superior strength. She lives in a world without cars or planes; no Internet, or smartphones, nothing that requires electricity functions in a world surrounded by the Cloud. Not even the locks that controlled the genetically modified designer monsters loved by the rich and powerful. Only “basic” technologies survived, including grenades, knives, and Lozen’s trusted .357 Magnum revolver.Cities became death traps, but the wilderness is little better. A group of four less-than-sane warlords kill her father and take her mother and younger siblings hostage. More than just the man-made creatures roam the land. Vampire-like beings are after her blood. And psychic abilities, possibly innate in humanity but submerged by technology, opens her mind to the thoughts of others, including an unknown invader who remains invisible and considers her “Little Food.” To keep her family safe, Lozen is forced to work for the warlords, destroying monsters. Lozen’s adventures involve near non-stop danger as she is forced to confront one monster after another while plotting to free her family. Her skill grows with each kill, as does the stockpile of food and weaponry she stashes after each mission. The four warlords realize how dangerous she is becoming, and some begin plotting her assassination. The story would have benefited from a little down-time between dangers. Readers have little time to catch their breaths and get to know Lozen, her family, and Hussein; the young gardener, fighter, musician and love interest who apparently has a little psychic power of his own. Killer Of Enemies provokes tantalizing thoughts about what technology might have cost human race, and about the price to be paid for the pursuit of perfection and longevity. The glimpses into Apache culture and legends bring a new layer to the idea of a dystopian story-world. Lozen’s abilities, strength, courage and determination to save her family will appeal to action lovers of any gender.