Tales of Power

What it’s like

Dry, sun-bleached desert and slow, repetitive dialogue set the mood of this one, read best with the heat of a long afternoon and a quiet room. The prose is plain and deliberate, written as a series of field-note sessions in which an apprentice sits with an old Yaqui teacher among rock, mesquite and dust in northern Mexico. Sentences are short and often circle back on themselves, so the book moves by accumulation rather than incident, with long stretches of conversation that feel like lessons being repeated until they sink in. Its vibe is austere and uncanny, somewhere between a hushed ethnography and a dream that won't quite resolve, with a steady undercurrent of unease when perception begins to shift. Intensity is low on the page: there is no gore, and the fear is psychological, arising from altered states brought on by plants and from talk of hidden forces rather than from anything shown in graphic detail. Expect frequent discussion of hallucinogens and ritual practice, and a few tense, eerie moments. It suits late-night or rainy-day reading by people drawn to mysticism, indigenous spiritual traditions, and slow, meditative books that ask the reader to stay with uncertainty.