SOURCE: Review of Dead Voices: Natural Agonies in the New World, in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 2, Spring, 1993, pp. 423-24.

In the following review, Warrior argues that while retaining many aspects characteristic of Vizenor's previous work, Dead Voices is more mature and confident.

Gerald Vizenor's new novel is an ideal followup to his Heirs of Columbus (1991) and other recent books. Dead Voices tells a ceremonial story of urban dwellers who play a tribal card game in which they become various animals, objects, and insects who face various urban challenges and dysfunctions. The elusive and allusive guide through the game is Bagese, a scatological urban trickster who has become a bear. Through this tribal card game, Vizenor's urban characters become fleas who fight against an exterminator ready to spray them into oblivion, squirrels chased by a heartless hunter who comes to be haunted by his wanton killing, praying mantises...