NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY CBC BOOKS AND THE GLOBE AND MAIL
In the third book of her brilliant and captivating Trickster Trilogy, Eden Robinson delivers an explosive, surprising and satisfying resolution to the story.
All Jared Martin had ever wanted was to be normal, which was already hard enough when he had to cope with Maggie, his hard-partying, gun-toting, literal witch of a mother, Indigenous teen life and his own addictions. When he wakes up naked, dangerously dehydrated and confused in the basement of his mom's old house in Kitimat, some of the people he loves--the ones who don't see the magic he attracts--just think he fell off the wagon after a tough year of sobriety. The truth for Jared is so much worse.
He finally knows for sure that he is the only one of his bio dad Wee'git's 535 children who is a Trickster too, a shapeshifter with a free pass to other dimensions. Sarah, his ex, is happy he's a magical being, but everyone else he loves is either pissed with him, or in mortal danger from the dark forces he's accidentally unleashed, or both. The scariest of those dark forces is his Aunt Georgina, a maniacal ogress hungry for his power, who has sent her posse of flesh-eating coy-wolves to track him down.
Even though his mother resents like hell that Jared has taken after his dad, she is also determined that no one is going to hurt her son. For Maggie it's simple--Kill or be killed, bucko. Soon Jared is at the centre of an all-out war--a horrifying place to be for the universe's sweetest Trickster, whose first instinct is not mischief and mind games but to make the world a kinder, safer, place.
Industry Reviews
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"Pure enjoyment. . . . Robinson manages to skillfully pull off a series that accomplishes a whole number of things at the same time: this novel-and the trilogy as a whole-is a thrilling, magic-realist adventure story; a compelling domestic novel that explores the various kinds of family . . . a grim ride into sadistic darkness . . . and wickedly funny, hard-edged and sardonic, tender and emotionally true." -Toronto Star
"Epic and exhilarating. . . . Return of the Trickster offers a surreal escape into a familiar but fantastical world . . . keep[ing] up a steady rhythm of suspense and danger, building towards an inevitable and satisfying showdown. . . . Never a minimalist storyteller, Robinson takes a stacked cast of supernatural characters with dizzying intergenerational grudges and adds a few more . . . never abandon[ing] her sense of humour." -Vancouver Sun
"[Return of the Trickster] gleefully revs into supernatural and psychedelic action and keeps up that pace through to its giddy final battle. . . . Robinson's voice is like no other . . . [with her] dry humour and penchant for delivering an outrageous detail as a comic aside. . . .[U]nmistakable." -Quill & Quire
"The last book in Eden Robinson's lauded Trickster trilogy is everything at once, in a good way. It's a page-turner dense with history and lore: gruesome . . . then suddenly hilarious." -Chatelaine
PRAISE FOR EDEN ROBINSON
"Eden Robinson was born to be a writer." -The Tyee
"[Robinson's work] straddles the line between violent trauma and humour and tenderness so gracefully. . . . [Robinson] expresses the internal compass of someone's mind in such a real way." -Emilee Gilpin, National Observer
"What [draws] me to her [is] the darkness that exists along a remarkable sense of humour. . . . I have an attraction to darkness in a story that is literary as much as it is cultural. It comes . . . from her literary heroes, like Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King." -Nick Mount, Quill & Quire
"[Robinson] isn't afraid of reaching into those dark corners. . . . [T]here's this kind of life to her and her writing. . . . I think that combination of being unafraid to look at really important and dark themes, but also approach it with this joy and life is a combination I think that's really affecting." -Jason Purcell, Canadian Literature Centre, Metro
