Another one of the Curwood books that is included in the omnibus I own. Yet another xenofiction by him, except that this one follows a dog and a bear! Spoilers ahead.
Nomads of the North follows two animals: Neewa, a black bear cub, and Miki, a young mutt. The unlikely duo end up becoming close friends as they travel the cold north together and face all sorts of dangers.
At first I wasn't too thrilled about this book, but it gradually grew on me. Bears aren't one of my favorite animals, so the fact that we started chapter one with a bear POV-threw me off a bit, especially as the summary on the back of my copy says that this is a book about a dog.
That, however, isn't a full lie, either, as a large portion of the book does focus on Miki. But Neewa honestly grew on me, too. They are both very different and in no way does Neewa start acting dog-like or Miki bear-like. They're still their own animals, they just have a strong friendship after they ended up being forced to survive together.
That said, the book does definitely feel like a "Miki-show" than a "Miki and Neewa"-show. Neewa has the first few chapters, but after Miki is introduced, a large portion of the book is dedicated to his POV only. The reason is logical: it becomes winter and Neewa goes to hibernate, but it still felt sad that this book in which their friendship is the focal point spends so much time with Miki alone.
There's a lot of inner turmoil in Miki in particular as he, being a pet hunting dog gone feral, must decide whether to remain feral with his bear friend, or his (past) owners. The answer was one I honestly didn't really expect: neither. Miki does find his old owner (Challoner) again and stays with him for a while, but even after that he keeps going back into the wild from time to time to spend time with Neewa.
In the end, Neewa becomes somewhat of a mascot of the area, being a semi-tame bear. I'm honestly not too fond of this, wild animals should be kept feral, but I guess the point of view on this subject was perhaps different back when.
This book also suffers a lot from Curwood's immense need to give every single animal the heroes come across a name, no matter how minor they are. I've mentioned this before, but it's just distracting and I'd prefer if he only kept the names to the relevant and recurring characters.
Overall a rather enjoyable xenofiction, though!
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