NOVEL REVIEW: Seekers - Return to the Wild, Book Three - River of Lost Bears

            Well!

            That time has come again. Yes, THAT time. The time where I look at the clock as soon as I start typing a review out and say, “Holy crap, it’s 12:14 AM?”

            Ah, the good times.

            I apologize; my reviews stopped for . . . well, a long time. I don’t feel like counting the months. And while I feel the juices stirring for (1) a horror-type story that I aim to scare my non-scare-able brother, and (2) that other one I’ve been working on for, say, a month and only have eleven pages, I aim to hitch up my skirts, run full speed, and jump back on this crazy train! So in those good spirits, I begin my first interview after having stripped Suzanne Collins’ overrated post-apocalypse to its barest essentials and revealed what it’s REALLY all about.

Am I the only one who noticed that
this bear looks really baked? Must have
been those funny mushrooms in the woods.

            My first review after having been gone for so long? Erin Hunter’s Seekers: Return to the Wild: River of Lost Bears. Because of course that title’s not long enough when adding, “You know, the woman who wrote that kick-ass first Warriors series and then fizzled out? Yeah, her. THAT Erin Hunter.” (Oh, and to reacquaint you with my disappointment, here are the links to the first in this new Seekers series: Island of Shadows, and The Melting Sea.)

            River of Lost Bears starts off with promise. Number One: We’re not on that accursed ice anymore, where the bears have been since the end of  The Last Wilderness, which happens to be book four of the first Seekers series (making that five books we have to deal with seal-fishing and Lusa and Toklo complaining about the ice and Kallik constantly cajoling them to be quiet; oh, yeah, every reader’s dream). Keep this fact in mind, now. It’s vital.

            Number Two for a Promising Start: Toklo runs into a bullied black bear named Chenoa and saves her and she starts journeying with them, making it a point to build a black bear-to-black bear friendship with Lusa. This point is also vital.

            The story starts out with the usual bear-banter and in way of relationship, Kallik has progressed to that of a stronger female figure and actually banters with Toklo more than usual, which I really liked. Yakone, however, was extremely annoying. Since the bears are back in the forest, Toklo and Lusa feel at home (which was really nice to see), and Kallik even felt comfortable, having traveled on land herself until she even met Toklo and Lusa. Yakone voices his displeasure often and loudly and makes it a hard point to drive home the fact that he left his beloved Star Island to be with Kallik—which hurts her, by the way, considering she nearly stayed with him there—and always “apologizes” in the most contrived way until he does it again! What the hey-ho, Yakone?! Don’t threaten to leave, if you’re so hell-bent on hating the forest and all it holds, just leave! Stop moping and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. AUGH!

            Anyway.

            Another thing I noticed about the characterization is that, yeah, Toklo’s starting to move on with his grief about Tobi, Oka, and Ujurak, but everyone else is flat. Flat. F-L-A-T. Really, worse than a pancake. Pretty much, like this:

See those mountains in the distance? Waaaaaaaay out there? That's Toklo.

Does it honestly look like four bears could free THIS???

            And I couldn’t believe how incredibly annoying Lusa turned out in this one! For a whole chapter she’s dancing the jig on those cut logs, freaking out about the bear spirits that are “trapped” within them. (Yeah, okay, we get it; apparently black bears inhabit trees when they die, stop being so annoying about it, because OBVIOUSLY you can’t do anything to get them out of the logjam. That’s why it’s called a JAM.)

            Oh, and do I mention that fact that *spoiler alert* they kill off the only promising prospect of the book? Yeah, CHENOA DIES. The only companion that could have reasonably settled down and made a friendship with Lusa, ends up dying. And not a reason is given as to why.

And if you say "to give the book its name because
of the logjam of 'lost bears,' " I will reach through
the screen and slap you.

            The adventure is pretty good, in terms of action, but the facts and believability go the way of the Costa Concordia really quickly, starting with the wolverine “pack-attack” and ending with Yakone’s jump onto a moving train while possessed of a serious injury. That’s pretty much, oh, the whole book. Let’s devise these fact-blunders, then, shall we? (Oh, yes, we shall.)

BLUNDER ONE: Wolverines attacking in packs.

It is a proven and well-known fact that wolverines do not, in fact, attack anything in packs. They don’t even stay together after mating! They only linger a few days with the opposite sex, do their business, and leave. And only recently has it been discovered that wolverines “hang” with siblings or hunt together OCCASIONALLY. For a wolverine, this is pretty nil, considering that scientists have JUST discovered this fact about them. They do not live in packs, therefore rendering a pack-attack on a group of bears in wolverine territory, void. They have solitary lives and would not even think about attacking a pack of bears together.

BLUNDER TWO: A black bear attacking a grizzly.

            Why would a black bear—weighing in at only 300 lbs.—once defeated by a grizzly the size of Toklo—a staggering 800 lbs.—even think of attacking the grizzly again??? It’s inconceivable! Not even for “vengeance” would this be carried out in the wild. Besides, black bears are known to frequently run from possible threats and climb a tree to get away from them. Hakan’s actions here are inexcusably stupid. (Read this link, Erin Hunter, and be ashamed.)

BLUNDER THREE: Coyotes attacking four adolescent bears.

            Are coyotes vicious? Oh, yes. Are they conniving? A thousand yeses. Deadly? Certainly. To bears? Let me think, um, NO. First, when one of these aforementioned bears happens to be a grizzly—who happens to weigh a whopping 800 lbs. compared to that of the coyote’s measly 15 to 25—I think this fight is a big no-no. Not to mention the fact that bears prey on coyotes. Not the other way around. And, by all means a law of nature, when prey is presented with a predator, prey flees. Simple as that.

BLUNDER FOUR: Yakone, seriously injured and barely able to move, jumps onto a train.

            After having a bear trap snap two of his toes off and the injury nearly putrefy by the end of the book, Yakone manages, somehow, to pull Toklo and a cling-on coyote off a precipice and onto a speeding train.

Yeah, no, that don't fly.

BLUNDER FIVE: Bears do not sheathe their claws.

            This was even noted in the Seekers Wiki. Bears never sheathe their claws, let alone unsheathe them.

Case in point.

            Tsk, tsk to you, author that is still currently a favorite of mine despite recent blunders. I honestly don’t understand what happened to your quality of writing since that first AMAZING Warriors arc with Rusty and Graypaw and all the twists and turns we never saw coming. Now you’ve resorted to this, Erin? Have you really? PLEASE, I implore you, return to your skill. Return to what made you the writer we fell in love with way back when. I, sadly, am addicted to your works because I have a problem with dropping collections I’m in the middle of (curse you, OCD), but I see clearly now what’s wrong. Please. Stop this crazy snakebeast.

            River of Lost Bears gets two torn pages out of ten.

Novel Review: Seekers: Return to the Wild, Book Two, - The Melting Sea by Erin Hunter

            Remember my post on Island of Shadows? I’m going to try my hardest not to be too scathing here. Bear with me. (Get it? Bear? Never mind.)

            So! In Island of Shadows, we found Toklo, Lusa, Kallik, and Yakone finally off that stupid island and onto the next leg of their journey. And that’s what we get for the vast majority of the book. Travel. Movement. Stopping to rest here, hunting there, digging out a den over in that corner. Again, this is not why I read a book. If I wanted to see bears traveling and digging out dens, I would watch the Discovery Channel or NatGeo (National Geographic). I do not understand what is running through Erin Hunter’s head right now, but quality certainly isn’t at the top of the list, and the stumble is painfully obvious. Has been for quite a few books, not just in this series.

            While the hunting and traveling is okay to a degree, we as readers demand more action, more struggle. Yeah, the bears get into binds once in a while, but it’s nothing that’s not easily fixed, and that aggravates the crap out of me. Nothing life-threatening has happened yet, and that is an annoyance factor as well. Where’s the stress? The internal turmoil? The doubt, the wanting to give up? Everything that makes characters as human as possible? Even when their animals, they need to display the same hero characteristics. No exception is given there. Look at the Redwall series by Brian Jacques. They hit obstacles all the time in their journeys, and they struggle against evil as hard as they can, and they’re all animals! (Note: While some may argue that his plots are “recycled,” I say you can never have enough hero lore in a land steeped in as much history as his is.)

            But that struggle is only present in certain situations in The Melting Sea. We run into random bears that need “help” and they hang around for a minute, but then the ultimate appearance of them has no real meaning. The reason the white bears were being taken to land is left unexplained, and that bothered me. Finally, when we did have some battling to do, Kallik finally showed some internal turmoil, but not for long. And the conflict with Taqqiq and his crew was short at best. I think that could have taken up a much larger portion of the book to add spice and conflict that would have ripped Kallik apart had Taqqiq not bowed to her anger so quickly, and then that would spawned more conflict and tension because the seals were growing scarce and the ice was melting, and Taqqiq’s crew would be stalking about causing more havoc . . . you can see how it needed to be written. I don’t care about a crag in a stupid mountain that the bears have to climb up. I care about what they’ll do in the face of hardship.

            Another note before the verdict: The writing seems . . . not choppy. But it seems like the Erin responsible for this series isn’t giving it her all. The punches are lacking, and the dynamic flow of showing v. telling is interrupted with clichés and awkward phrasing. The flow is broken in plenty of places by too-long sentences and amateur Wordsmithing. Sad. They used to be so good. Seekers: Return to the Wild: The Melting Sea gets Two flipped pages out of Ten.

Novel Review: Seekers: Return to the Wild, Book One - Island of Shadows by Erin Hunter

            I read a blog post on novelmatters.com recently that really grabbed my attention. It was called “Storyteller Vs. Status Seeker.” The premise of the post was that real and true storytellers can’t wait to get back in and start writing again, no matter how “important” publicity may be. They want words, and they will get their words one way or another. Status seekers are storytellers who get caught up in pumping out the next novel for the sake of noveling. They want as many books as possible to be recognized as “that author.” Unfortunately, it happens a lot.

            Mega-unfortunately, it’s happened to one of my favorite authors of all time.

            Erin Hunter had an amazing first series of Warriors books that captured my imagination and took me to the forest I have never left in my mind as I followed Fireheart and Graystripe on their perilous journey to stay alive amidst so much war and devastation among the cat Clans. I will never forget the amazingness of that first series. However, as the years go by, the team of five have fallen from storytellers to status seekers. I witnessed this over their last warrior cat arc, Warriors: Omen of the Stars. Quality fell dramatically. All but two of the characters fell into the “blah” and “gray” categories. It was like a mass merging of personalities into one entity that somehow split itself into multiple creatures with slightly altering factors. Needless to say, I was severely annoyed. This quality downturn took a sharp hook into their bear series, Seekers.

            Now, the first series I can’t review because I read it a while ago and can’t remember everything about the books. But I can say that the last one in the first series disappointed. Hunter built up the plot to where the bears—Toklo, Lusa, Ujurak, and Kallik—were going to do something amazing, but what they ended up doing was destroying an oil tower to “save the wild.” (insert disappointed stoic face) Wow, really? This trend continues in the second series, Seekers: Return to the Wild.

            The first book pretty much was about this: travel and getting lost. The teaser offered us that Toklo, Lusa, Kallik, and now Yakone were going to get lost in a set of dark tunnels and be stuck there amidst peril and adventure as they tried to find their way out. Did it happen? No. They were lost for approximately two chapters, three at most. This—aggravated—me. To no end did it aggravate me. And the little bear they ended up encountering? Yeah, Nanulak was more a pestilence and annoyance than anything. I hated him so much I cannot begin to convey the frustration I harbored towards this bear. Oh, and yes, hunting and stuff is essential, but when the book is comprised of 80% hunting and travel with random, meaningless appearances from other bears (Tekani, the polar bear Toklo met up with briefly), then I fail to understand how the book made it onto the New York Times bestseller list. It failed in delivering what it promised. Miserably.

            Seekers: Return to the Wild: Island of Shadows gets Three flipped pages out of Ten.