New arc? I can't wait to get started! Spoilers ahead!
Three new animal protagonists lead the charge this time around. Stride the cheetah is finding strife within his coalition, especially with his leader Jinks. Whisper the water buffalo is an orphan with only her little brother to look after. Then suddenly he is chosen as the next herd leader, leading to unrest within the group. Finally, a young hyena known as Tailgrabber is struggling to make herself heard in her clan, which is consistently feuding with a nearby lion pride.
As you can tell from these stories, they do sound like interesting concepts. And I think they work, I was definitely invested in each POV here. However, so far, even with this being a first book of the arc...it just feels a little bit too disconnected from one another. Bravelands arcs one and two also had three very different protagonist POVs in book one of each respective arc, but there they always already felt like they had a bit more semblance of connection even early on. Here, this just feels like three almost completely separate stories.
Granted, there are hints thrown at the reader that the stories are connected, and on a single occasion two protagonists do interact (Tailgrabber trying to save Echo, Whisper's brother, while Whisper watches), but outside of that it's just minor hints. If there'd been even just two or three parts where there was more interaction between the POVs it'd have felt a bit more like a "whole" story, if you catch my drift, because outside of that one scene I just mentioned this literally feels like three completely different stories which happen to take place in the same land.
That aside, there's definitely some plusses here. I like our protagonists. Mostly. Bravelands arc one and two always had lead characters I was never quite so fond of, at least not in their introductory books, but here I found all of our protagonists to be pretty likable from the start. From stubborn yet sentimental Stride to careful and loyal Whisper to Tailgrabber, who is quite unlike any other hyena.
With Tailgrabber, however, I do have a minor point of contention. On the one hand, I like her as a protagonist, like I just said. She's likable but also has some unique stuff going on with her being one of the only hyenas to somewhat believe in the authority of the Great Parent. However, I also...kind of wish she was more like the standard Bravelands hyena.
Throughout all three arcs so far, it has been shown that hyenas are some of the outliers in the Bravelands when it comes to how they behave (usually rather aggressive and brash) from most other animal species, how they think about death and how they don't acknowledge the Great Parent as their master like most other species, but instead worship their own deity known as the Great Devourer. And I thought this would make for a really interesting protagonist, since it's so different from the usual Bravelands protagonist fare...only for it to end up being pretty much exactly like it again because Tailgrabber is very hashtag not like other girls (by girls I mean hyenas). She's much gentler and pacifistic than the usual hyena, she doesn't quite have the same reverence for death the others do and of course she's so far the only known hyena to somewhat believe in the Great Parent.
So while I do like Tailgrabber as a protagonist, I'd just hoped for something a little more unique from the Bravelands standard because there's so much to work with with the hyena lore we've set up for them so far. Tailgrabber doesn't even learn any of these things, she's literally just gentle and somewhat loyal to the Great Parent from the start. Which is just a shame and missed potential for a truly unique protagonist.
I guess the argument could be made that it would make her unlikable, but Bravelands has had unlikable protagonists in the past (e.g. Fearless in some of the later arc one books). Also it could be an opportunity for her to actually grow into something different from her clan, if she'd started out as ruthless as the rest of them but slowly started to feel different and like she didn't fit in anymore. It'd probably still lead to the same outcome: her being banished once the clan found out about her good nature.
I do like the final revelation Tailgrabber has in this book which seems to be the inverse, though: she does get banished for being too kind and gentle, however it eventually leads to her hardening up a bit and killing an old lioness foe, renaming herself Breathstealer as she chokes the lioness to death. So this does have potential for in the future, but throughout most of this book she definitely doesn't really feel like we're reading from a Bravelands hyena POV.
As for the conflicts so far: I find them to be interesting. Stride's is probably the one with the (relatively) lowest stakes, since it's mostly "just" interpersonal drama between him and Jinks, the leader of his coalition who doubts Stride's loyalty and has his eyes set on Stride's love interest and later mate. This leads to some eventual heartbreak. I find Jinks to be an okay villain, however so far he very much feels like a diet version of Ashfur from Warriors.
The buffalo conflict is a power struggle, with their old leader being gravely injured and having to retire. Everyone expects a certain bull to be the new leader, but instead Whisper's younger brother Echo is chosen, much to everyone's surprise because he's very young and not the most competent buffalo around. This leads to a power struggle among the buffalo, with foul play eventually coming into the mix. This is a much higher-stakes conflict since the two entire buffalo herds depend on them, and by extension the rest of the Bravelands. I still find the antagonists in this part of the conflict so far to be rather underwhelming, though.
Finally, we have the hyenas conflict with Tailgrabber's POVs. Her clan has been at war with Noblepride for ages now and Tailgrabber is tired of the endless fighting, seeing no point to it all especially since each faction keeps retaliating with more and more deaths on both sides. That aside, Tailgrabber is also seen as a bit of a failure of a hyena by her kin because of her gentleness and tendency to give the Great Spirit the benefit of the doubt. Once again a pretty intense conflict with high stakes, and also the one where by far the most death is involved as lion after lion and hyena after hyena keep biting the dust due to the war.
So these three conflicts, while separate for now, are pretty decent. If I had to rate them, I'd put Stride's on top, then Tailgrabber's second and Whisper's last. Not that one is objectively better than the other, but I like Stride's conflict the most. It's technically the lowest stakes conflict in the grand scheme of things, but Stride's conflict has a lot of personal stakes, because it relies heavily on his relationships to those he is close with, whether it be his disabled brother, his mate, his best friend or his leader (and later archenemy) Jinks.
Also, this book does something I'm really happy with: they do a soft reboot of the series, something I think Erin Hunter's Warriors series is in a dire need of. The series is still set in the same universe and all, however this third arc starts many, many years after the original two arcs. And it doesn't constantly reference them, either. Yes, there's hints sprinkled in here and there (e.g. to Great Parents Thorn and Prance, there now being a river named after Grandmother, and Noble from Noblepride is actually Ruthless' distant descendant) but overall it's rather subtle and you could honestly just read this book without having read the prior two arcs.
Which is just...neat. I like this idea of doing semi-separate stories in the same universe much more than constantly having everything intertwine and connect like in Warriors, leading to a lot of convoluted stories and retcons. Even the second Bravelands arc had the wisdom not to be too close to the original, with only a few of the old cast returning and already being elderly by then. So this is neat. I hope more Erin Hunter series start doing this in the future. Of course it's good to reference old books, but not everything needs to be a super tightly knit messy plot where everything happens directly after one another like with Warriors.
So, yeah. I'm not mega impressed by this or anything, but I think it was a nice first entry for the Thunder on the Plains arc. I do wonder whether this will be another trilogy arc, or we're going back to six books for this one. Either way, I'll be happy to read future installments!
Rating: 3.5/5
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