Reviewed by LadyJay for TeensReadToo.com

At fourteen, Siki knows that she will walk a difficult path among her tribe. Having no talent for women's work, Siki has chosen to live and train as a warrior. Many of her fellow tribesmen view her as a disgrace; an outcast. Siki only wishes for one thing - revenge.

The senseless murders of her mother and younger brother have sparked a bitterness within Siki that cannot be extinguished. Every day the attackers live is another reminder of how her family was slaughtered. Siki's warrior spirit is strong and will not be bent. The pride she feels for her people is boundless. Her training is arduous, but necessary. What she learns as an Apache warrior may very well save her life and the lives of her people.

Her path is chosen; she does not look back.

Landman expresses in her author's note that she has not tried to create an accurate historical novel, but rather one that is based on true events. She wished to explore how one might have felt if put in Siki's situation. The author allows Siki to narrate her own story, thus producing an extremely strong piece of writing. Because of this, the reader becomes intimately involved with Siki and the events surrounding her.

Siki is filled with wisdom and courage and that will appeal to many young readers. Those who follow her on her journey will not be disappointed. ( )

I took this book with me on a weekend break, and the what with the wild January weather curtailing outdoor pursuits, managed to finish it!

The book is aimed at the teenage market, and is the tale of Siki, a young Apache girl who decides to follow the way of the warrior, rather than join the women of the tribe. I thoroughly enjoyed it, it's a sad but lyrical tale. (And being history, I could view the horrors from a distance, unlike the previous book I read).

I won't give away the twist at the end of the book, but it makes you ponder the whole nurture-nature debate - are we made by our genes or our surroundings? Do we follow the ways of our forebears, or do we owe our loyalty to those we live alongside, who have shaped our character, be they genetically linked or no?

I was thinking about buying this for a young relative (many describe it as suitable for 11+). Even though I (an adult) found it very moving, there are a lot of adult themes. If you have your own 11 year old, make up your own mind, but if it's for someone elses child, I'd wait until they're around 13/14 in case it gives them nightmares!

Strong story, strong heroine. Riveting historical fiction. ( )

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I’ve finally managed to catch up with the seventh of this year’s Carnegie short-listed titles and I am so glad I have. Tanya Landman’s Apache about an Apache girl determined to become a warrior and avenge the deaths of her mother and brother at the hands of Mexican insurgents, is both a moving and well-written book.
Basing her story on the accounts of women who rode with the great Nineteenth Century Apache leaders, Landman has created a heroine in Siki who is believable both as a woman and as a warrior. After seeing her four year old brother decapitated by in-comers who had sworn friendship with her tribe, she learns, like the rest of her people, not to trust the word of those who see Native Americans as nothing more than an encumbrance in the way of obtaining the land and mining rights they crave themselves. In search of revenge she seeks the right to study with the warriors of her tribe and undergo the necessary trials in order to be accepted in the councils of her people. Not all of those she fights with see her as an equal and there are the sort of tensions that you would find in any society where a woman steps up and asks for what is hers by right but not always by custom. There is also the vexed question of what happened to her father, who has been presumed dead at the hands of the Mexicans but whose body was never found. Did he betray his people to their enemies? And, if so, will Siki have inherited his treachery? Not everyone trusts her and so for some she has to prove herself doubly.
The story is enough to carry any reader along, but far more intriguing for me is the picture that Landman draws of the Apache way of life and the code by which they lived. This may be all ‘old hat’ to an American audience, but I suspect it will be less familiar to UK readers. There is the question, of course, as to whether or not a British author can ever have the credentials to write about the Native American way of life, but if you visit Landman’s web-site it seems plain that she has done her research thoroughly and has written out of a desire to explore the truth of a situation that she. like so many of us brought up on the cinema of the 1950s and 60s, had falsified for us on a regular Saturday morning basis.
(“We are the boys and girls well known as minors of the ABC!” Sorry about that, I lived in the cinema as a child.)
And that, I think, is the most important thing about this book. It comes across as a story that Landman felt she just had to tell. While it could have been simply a PC exercise (like some of the other books on this year’s list) this has a sense of passion and commitment about it that says that isn’t the case. I would love to read this aloud to a class of ten and eleven year olds. They would be completely engaged, as was I.