In my rating of the books from the '20s, I put the two collections of folk stories in the bottom two spots. Waterless Mountain is not really a collection of folk stories, but at least half the book is one character or another relating a folk tale. The incorporation into a narrative whole may be part of why I prefer Waterless Mountain over Shen of the Sea and Tales from Silver Lands, but there's more to it than that. The other two books treat the folk tales like mythology, or an anthropological record from another culture, even tinging the stories with a little condescension.This one, though, is about a Navajo boy who is in training to become a medicine man, and his education in the stories of his ancestors are written in a way that make them feel like a religion, rather than superstitions. There's an aura of the supernatural throughout the narrative that gives it a similar feel to Gay Neck, that makes you want to exist in the world where the religion is perfectly apparent and applicable. Like Gay Neck, the plot is weak, but the tone makes up for it.
