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...all right. The problem I have with all the people yelling racefail at Patricia C. Wrede is this: she never says there are no indigenous people. It's just that, 100 years into settling Columbia, none have been found.

In 100 years of settling, they have not made it past the Rockies. They have not even made it near enough to the Rockies to be able to see them from their furthest-out settlements. They apparently have not made it very far into what would be Canada, either, at least not based on my reading of the book.

Considering where the land-bridge is that probably would have allowed that initial migration from Asia to the landmass of the Americas, is it that hard to believe that the settlers just haven't "tamed" enough land to find the indigenous people? And that somewhere out there, there are groups of indigenous people living happily alongside steam dragons and wooly mammoths? Or that they have made it so far, but whatever indigenous people there are regard the settlers as rather stupid about how to deal with this whole nature thing and just stay out of their way?

Granted, there are scary magical creatures that might make the entire country hostile to human life, but humans are good at adapting...

But then, I suppose the book might write out indigenous people for good. It could be that humans never made it far enough into Asia to get to that land bridge - there was some mention of the Hijero-Cathayan magicians driving out the last of the dragons in the eastern portions of the Africa/Asia/Europe continent, and dragons are terribly hostile towards humans.

We don't know about South America, either...

And it's stupid of me to say "Well, there are strong African characters, so it's all right," because I am as white and bland and European-ancestry as they come, and my perspective is "oooh, cool book!". But at the same time, I feel like it's world-building while looking at the consequences of having huge horrible magical beasts roaming about. Africa becomes the first place humanity thrives, maybe because it's low on huge horrible magical beasts, maybe for some other reason. Humanity spreads, and learns to harness magic to deal with huge horrible magical beasts, but has a lot of trouble spreading quickly due to said huge horrible magical beasts. Doesn't quite make it to land bridge in time to migrate, or makes it through in small groups that get lost and swallowed up.

Or maybe she didn't think it through that much. Goodness knows. But for once, I was happy to see a YA book with black characters even in it, let alone positively portrayed as mentors to the main character. I was happy to see a YA book with systems of magic that are NOT Euro-centric, in which these other ways of working with magic are proven to actually be better than the European brand in many cases. I was happy to see the people who didn't use magic faring better than those who did ENTIRELY because they didn't rely on magic to make everything work.

I liked this book for a lot of reasons. I don't want to have to be angry at it.

The question is, if she had "Native Columbians" in this book, and built their magic system off of what information there is about Native American cultures, how many people would still be yelling racefail? How many people would get just as if not more upset about a misinterpretation of their own culture as they would about it missing completely? At least the Afrikan and Hijero-Cathayan cultures are at a far enough distance that they're only dealt with in vagaries, but a Native Columbian culture would be right there. The magic, the culture, everything, only changed considerably due to the nature of the creatures around. How many people would be angrier at that?