A book by Ernest Seton chronicling the stories of various critters he knew throughout his lifetime, taking place in the late 1800's. Let's find out whether it's any good or not. Spoilers ahead. Content warning for a brief mention of rape and of course animal death/abuse.
Like said before, this is a short story collection containing stories about various animals Seton encountered. From the legendary Lobo, King of the Currumpaw to a simple red-ruffed ptarmigan, their stories are told over here.
I'm honestly very torn on this book. Parts of it were really adventurous and emotional. Others were downright boring. The writing tone shifted between Seton's being the narrator in a non-fiction style to the animals talking Watership Down-style. It just doesn't feel like a very consistent whole, I guess?
The stories I enjoyed the most were those of Lobo (the one I wanted to read the book for) and the Springfield Fox, with my least favorites being The Pacing Mustang and Raggylug. They were varying in quality and, like I said before, way or narration. I honestly much preferred the (seemingly) factual way of telling Lobo's story to the more anthropomorphized way Seton approached some of the other stories. It really makes you wonder if he didn't just make 90% of the stories regarding these animals up. Yes, he (allegedly) knew them in his life, but it just feels a bit much to make whole coherent anthropomorphized stories out of them.
They're also really dark. I'm not just talking animal death here, also animal abuse and the rabbit story even has some rabbit rape in it (not graphic but it clearly wasn't voluntary on the female's part, and this was actually one of the anthropomorphized stories). Yeah. Yikes.
So I can't in good conscience give this a high score. It felt very inconsistent and while some of them were really good, the others were either dull or just downright depressing. I think I'll just stick to remembering Lobo's tale.
Rating: 2/5
No comments:
Post a Comment