Now that
I’ve tackled the original arc of Survivors, it’s time to look at some
backstories! This is the first in the three so far released short story
novellas relating to this series! In this one we discover Alpha’s past.
Spoilers ahead.
Alpha (who
goes through various names in this book, but I’ll just keep using his main name
for simplicity’s sake) is born in a pack of wolves, where he is shunned by
almost everyone for his half-dog roots. Due to a hunt going wrong, he ends up
becoming a guard dog for a sheep farm, together with a bunch of dobermans, one
of whom he loves. Alpha must finally decide where his heart lies, with Calamity
and the Longpaw Fangs, or in the wild.
This was
an… inconsistent one? Did we read about the same character as in the main arc?
First things out of the way: this book doesn’t answer quite a few questions I’d
hope it’d answer. For example, we don’t really know why he hates the Longpaw
Fangs so much. Is it because they scarred him? He didn’t mind spending time
with them before and even took one of them as his mate, yet in the main series
he hates them and thinks they’re irredeemable, all of them. His relationship
with Calamity didn’t even end on his part, it was Calamity who told him to follow
his heart into the wild. She didn’t even rudely end it, she just told him to
get away when she could create an opportunity for him.
Then
there’s the fact that Alpha calls himself an alpha despite not having a pack
yet. Two dogs don’t make a pack, the main series makes that pretty clear.
That’s just a duo. A pack in this series is a bunch of animals. He just meets
Snail, but there’s no others. And how did others join him? He wasn’t exactly
charismatic or have experience with being a leader, being a follower all his
life, so there isn’t really any explanation to fill in the gap between this
short story and the main arc.
Then of
course I wonder what happened to make Alpha so bitter by the original arc. When
he meets Fiery (called by his pup name Snail) in this book, he isn’t really all
that angry or cold, he even seems to like the pup and takes him in. Yet in the
original arc he is pretty much completely cold-hearted towards both the Fierce
dogs as a whole and most others, safe maybe Sweet. So, again, it is implied
that more happened between this story and the main arc to make him this bitter.
What? Not a clue. Maybe the next short stories about Sweet and Moon will answer it, but I doubt it.
It overall
just felt like this Alpha was a very different character from the one in the
books. This was a character I could get invested in and that had depth, but he
feels so vastly different from main arc-Alpha that they don’t feel like the
same character, especially with things still feeling left untouched by the end
of it.
His
relationship with Calamity also went way too fast. I get that these are short
story novellas, but damn, this really came out of nowhere. She was nice to him
a few times, then they instantly became mates, then just as fast they split up
again. Just bad pacing.
While I
enjoyed this story fine and I do appreciate the thought of giving Alpha a
backstory, it overall just didn’t connect enough to the main story for it to
not be confusing. Check it out if you’re a Survivors fan, but don’t expect all
your questions about this character to be answered.
Rating: 3/5
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