Book Review: Baree, Son of Kazan by James Oliver Curwood (Kazan and Baree #2)

 

I recently took a look at Kazan by James Oliver Curwood, so I figured I might as well review the sequel, which focuses on the son of Kazan. Spoilers ahead.

Baree, son of Kazan the dog and Gray Wolf the wolf, strays away too far from home as a pup and ends up having to teach himself how to survive. He does this by robbing bear stashes or traps. He later ends up befriending a girl named Nepeese, daughter of a father who is being consistently threatened by a man named McTaggart who desires her for himself.

So, first things first, trigger warning for pedophilia and just general creepiness from McTaggart if you want to read this book. Nepeese is stated to be seventeen years old during the book, so maybe she was considered a woman back then, I don't know, but it still reads as incredibly creepy to have this man constantly go after her and think of her in sexual ways. Heck, he even kills her father and almost kills Baree just to get her, she is eventually forced to jump off a cliff which could've killed her just to evade McTaggart. The villain does get his comeuppance in the end as a friendly man and Baree kill him, but still, a whole lot of yikes in here. 

There's also quite a few inconsistencies between this book and Kazan. In that book, Baree is gray and wanders off on his own. In Baree, he is black with a white ear tip and accidentally gets separated from his parents. Kazan is also described as a wolfdog (not a full dog like he is said to be in Baree) and has red eyes, yet in this book they're said to be green. 

There's also this weird occurrence where a pack of wolves attacks Baree simply over the fact that he's black-coated, which is just kind of nonsense if you ask me. The reasoning they give is "because its reminds them of black bears". There's one problem: there's tons of black wolves in Canada. Are they implying that about 50-60% of wolves are just going to be cast out because they have a darker fur color? Yeah, that's just bull.

This story would also get really into the human subplots. They were present with Kazan, but less so than here. It honestly felt like it was distracting from our main character, the titular Baree, a lot. I get it if they want to give some bare bones background to the human characters in the story, but it felt a bit like overkill over here, especially since some of the subject matter we dive into is kind of yikes.

Another thing Curwood starts doing in this book is naming way too many side characters. Oddly enough this doesn't really happen much on the human side of things, but rather with the animals. Animals that appear in one scene only or are just prey there to be killed will be given a name. I get it if they want to do this for the more major players in the story, but it is just really unnecessary to give every single animal that appears on-page a name. 

So, yeah, while enjoyment-wise I liked this book much the same as its predecessor, the criticisms I described here unfortunately drag it down. It's not like it couldn't have worked, just tone down the amount of creepy human stuff, animal names, retcons and wolf racism and it probably would've ended up with the same rating as Kazan. 

Rating: 3/5