I've tackled arc one, so let's jump over to the second arc. Will it reach the same highs as the first? Or reach a few lows like other Erin Hunter books? Spoilers ahead.
The wilderness has been saved, meaning Lusa, Kallik and Toklo, as well as another polar bear called Yakone, are traveling home. Throughout their journey they keep being visited by a spirit version of Ujurak in their dreams, and the joining of Nanulak, a hybrid grolar bear, starts to slowly tear the bears apart. Will they be able to travel home in peace?
New book, new arc. I'm pretty excited and once again going in blindly for this arc. However, this book wasn't my favorite introduction to an arc. It wasn't bad, but it just was a bit...aimless sometimes.
I've already complained in the last arc for a bit about the fact that these are basically endless traveling books and the goals the bears are traveling towards are usually very vague and not very well-defined. That's once again the case here. The four main bears keep talking about going "home", but what does that even entail?
They make it clear that the four of them want to stay together, yet Kallik also keeps talking about taking Yakone to the Endless Ice where she was born. And we all know by now that Toklo and Lusa cannot survive there. And even in the first arc the bears never truly had a home, despite the Last Wilderness initially seeming so. So where are they even going? Again, the closest to a goal we have is Kallik's Endless Ice, but that's just...not a suitable location for Toklo and Lusa to live. So basically once again our bear group is traveling aimlessly without knowing where they're heading exactly.
Nanulak was definitely...interesting. He is this young grolar bear who joins the group and grows particularly close to Toklo, but throughout the book he keeps being manipulative, lying and just acting like a nuisance. And while he's an interesting antagonist, I also feel that his motivations have some...implications that I'm not sure are good. Keep in mind, I myself am not mixed race (just white), so I'm not any authority on this issue, but Nanulak's entire villainous motivations is that he hates himself and his family because he's a mixed species bear and is trying to enact vengeance upon his parents for conceiving him. He even tries to get Toklo, a stronger bear, to kill his father for him.
Of course, the plan doesn't work out and eventually Nanulak's motivation is revealed. Toklo also isn't that violent of a bear so he just lets Nanulak's father off with a warning. And they even try to help him, both his family and our main group, but Nanulak just hates himself and the ones responsible for him so much that he runs off. And I mean, as a villain I think he's one of the more well-written ones we've seen in the Seekers series so far. But I can't help but feel he has some unfortunate implications. He's the only major mixed-race character we get in the series so far and he's the main antagonist here.
That said, the book was overall good. I liked the characters and their interactions, and the fact that Yakone doesn't just fit seamlessly into the group but is willing to adapt to stay with Kallik. I also do consider Nanulak to be pretty well-written as a villain, like I said before. But this book didn't exactly steal the show, either. It still feels very similar to a lot of traveling books from the first arc and we still don't have a clear goal in mind, since whatever "home" means is poorly defined at best.
Rating: 3.5/5
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