The most recent and presumably last in the David Clement-Davies Animal Xenofiction Universe. Like, these aren't all technically part of the same series (except for The Sight and Fell), but they obviously take place in the same universe, just in different locations and time periods. So let's take a look at the most recent installment. Spoilers ahead.
We meet Uteq, a young polar bear born with a black paw that supposedly marks him the One from an old prophecy, a bear gifted with powers who will bring salvation to the bears after a tyrant has taken over and the ice is diminishing due to global warming. Uteq (joined by his adopted sister Sepharga) goes on a journey of self-discovery in order to succeed in his task.
A friend of mine described this book as a clusterfuck and honestly, yeah, that's the best way to put it. This book really was one. I haven't been a big fan of any of his books in this universe after Fire Bringer, but good god is this a way to go down.
First things first: this book basically is a retread of Fire Bringer but with polar bears and an Arctic setting instead. Don't believe me? Okay, so we have a male individual (Rannoch/Uteq) who is born with a special mark (oaken leaf on forehead/black front paw) that signifies he's a part of a prophecy. He is hunted down by a one-dimensional male villain with one eye (Sgorr/Glawnaq) who rules over a large group of animals, amongst which is a special force of elite warriors the villain named after himself (Sgorrla/Glawneye). One of the main characters childhood friends is a set of twins (Pippa and Willow/Matta and Qilaq). The main villain hopes to woo the main character's mother (Elion/Enarga) by keeping her hostage. Mother dies only moments after re-uniting with son in adulthood. Father of the protagonist (Brechin/Toleg) is brutally murdered by the main villain's forces. In his childhood the main character knew an old male storyteller who was murdered for helping the protagonist (Blindweed/Narnooq). The main character goes on a large journey of self-discovery and at first is in denial about his role as prophecy individual, before finally accepting his role and bringing about the end of the villain.
Seriously, I am not one to easily compare stuff, especially if it's minor. But if you look at everything I described above you can clearly see how much these two are alike. Yes, there are obvious differences, but there are a lot more similarities. And it's not like Clement-Davies can't think up an original story after Fire Bringer, since neither The Sight nor Fell (despite not being very good) resembled the original story this much. Heck, the story even becomes coy at one point and starts pointing out that Uteq is a lot like Rannoch. Like, addressing your problems does not make it go away, DCD!
Okay, what about the rest? Characters first. I didn't care about them. I honestly had this too with Clement-Davies' wolf books. Fire Bringer didn't have the most amazing or original cast of characters in a book ever, but I still loved most of them. Here? I don't care about 90% of them. Only one I kind of vibed with was Sepharga but there's two things surrounding her that makes me dislike her partially as well (we'll get to that). But since so many of these characters feel like Fire Bringer character clones anyways, why should I care about them? The deer book did it better.
Then there's the lore. Good god is this a convoluted mess. I don't mind stories like this (e.g. Fire Bringer or Watership Down) having their own lore and legends, but it shouldn't overtake the story, like it does here. There's entire chapters dedicated to just characters telling each other legends and stories, and the lore just did not interest me whatsoever. I kept checking out mentally during these unless I forced myself to persist. The lore in Fire Bringer was certainly there, but it was kept to a minimum and was actually interesting. Here? They just keep going on and on about this Pollooq fellow and I did. Not. Care. Which is a huge setback if the story hinges so much on the lore.
I do think it's interesting that the polar bear society is heavily based around stories and telling them. That's an interesting concept for an animal society. But the execution just falls flat because the lore was boring and confusing. Also, pretty much all stories centered around a bear named Pollooq and his love Teela. For a society so heavily relying on telling stories, even having a now-extinct guild dedicated specifically to male storytellers, you'd think they'd have stories about other bears than Pollooq. But there barely are any. It's just Pollooq this, Pollooq that, and like I said before, I couldn't be arsed to remotely care.
The boringness in general was a huge problem. This book was a slog to get through. And not a short one, either, being a needless 600+ pages long. I kept going because I wanted to finish it so I could write this review, but I genuinely struggled sometimes to keep myself focused because it was just so dull. So boring. I didn't care about the characters. The worldbuilding had potential but I didn't care about the lore that was presented to us. The plot was a retread of Fire Bringer, so, again, I didn't care.
As for the clusterfuck part: yeah, so at one point in the story our protagonist becomes Ice Mad and goes on a spiritual journey where he learns literally everything about life and the universe. And it was confusing as all hell and my mind really checked out during this chapter. I could still force myself to stay at least somewhat focused during the others, but during this one I just blanked. What the hell is going on here? There's so much happening and so little of it made sense to me. And it feels unneeded. This supposedly makes Uteq realize who he is and is his turnaround point, but it was so confusing and went at a million miles per second that the reader is left utterly confused.
Another thing: the constant biblical references. Other DCD works have done this before (e.g. The Sight), but it becomes really obnoxiously apparent here. Some of the bear lore stories that aren't surrounding Pollooq are literally bible stories but repurposed to be a part of animal culture. Which just feels really cheap and lazy. Clement-Davies is fairly good at thinking up his own lore, so it feels so lazy here (and just out of place. These are animals, they do not know what a human God is). And there's also literal quotes from the Bible? Just feels really jarring in your xenofiction story where animals cannot even communicate with humans or read Bibles that they some how have their own versions of biblical stories.
I think I'm almost done here, but we need to briefly touch on the Sepharga thing. Well, two things, actually. Content warning for incest mentions in this paragraph. First of all: Sepharga "dies" halfway into the book. And I didn't buy it for a second. I instantly had a feeling she was somehow coming back. And wouldn't you know it? She did, during the climax. Really cheapens her "death" and the fact that it was predictable beyond belief wasn't any great either. Now, for the even worse part: Sepharga is Uteq's adopted sister...and love interest. Just...what? Was that really necessary? It also would've been so easy to avoid this. Either have her not be his adopted sister, just a childhood friend, or have him fall for another bear (Matta is a prime candidate). Now we have this incestuous relationship between our main characters and it feels kinda gross honestly. And don't give me that "they're not related by blood"-crap, either. They're family regardless of that, so this made me really uncomfortable. It's not like in Warriors, either, where the incest is kind of unavoidable and accidental based on the worldbuilding. The story literally calls Sepharga his sister at multiple occasions, so DCD is definitely aware of this.
Finally, I wanted to say that I genuinely spotted some spelling/punctuation mistakes here. Which for a professionally published book is obviously a nono.
So I'm giving this book 1.5 stars, for the potential it had. But the other stars get deducted for rehashing Fire Bringer, boring lore, mindfuck moments, pverall blandness and other bad aspects. I wouldn't recommend this one, just go back to Fire Bringer. It's the same plot but executed 100% better.
Rating: 1.5/5
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