Saturday, February 24, 2024

Book Review: The Burning Horizon by Erin Hunter (Seekers: Return to the Wild #5)

 

These reviews for the second arc are getting exhausting to write. Ah well, let's have a look. Spoilers ahead.

Lusa, Toklo, Kallik and Yakone do their best to make their way back to Great Bear Lake just in time for the large gathering of bears. But the journey is difficult, especially when Lusa gets separated from the main group and is held captive by some flat-faces. Will they be able to re-unite and make it to the lake in time?

When I say these reviews, especially for arc two of this series, are getting exhausting to write, the explanation is simple. These books are far too repetitive for their own good. And I'm not just talking arc two, but also arc one. Every single book is a traveling book and roughly they all deal with the same conflicts (one of the main group being an asshole; food shortage; humans interfering; some sort of natural disaster or trouble or pollution; other predator animals or stranger bears bothering the main four; rinse and repeat). And especially in this book I just feel so ungodly bored because I have literally been there done that with all these conflicts.

One of the characters gets taken by flat-faces, and it happens to be Lusa again. This already happened to her last arc, do we really need a repeat of that plot point? And the rest of the book is just the characters traveling, looking for Lusa, and looking for Great Bear Lake. How exciting. 

There is just so much repetition across these two arcs and no real steps are taken to set each book apart. Some do somewhat stand apart, but overall this series just feels like one big same-y story. Even the good books fall into this trap. 

So while I want to like these books, I just feel so very bored reading them because everything feels like I've seen it before. There is barely any variation to keep things fresh.

Also, after literally every single book in this series so far having been a traveling book, I have had enough of those to last a lifetime. I really just wish these bears would settle somewhere, which is literally the main point of this arc (each bear find a home), but they never stay put for long before moving on, continuing this never-ending journey. It's exhausting and just very boring to read.

So I can't give this a high rating, unfortunately. It's not offensively bad or anything, but so bland and repetitive and forgettable that it's not at all remarkable. I am glad that there's only one book left in this series.

Rating: 2/5

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