Badger xenofiction. I think this is a first for me. Spoilers ahead!
The badgers of the Cilgwyn cete are facing trouble when their kind is being exterminated by humans, who fear they might spread tuberculosis. Under the leadership of a badger named Buckwheat, and later his son Beaufort, the cete must find their promised land, their "Elysia", as they call it, where they will be safe from humans hurting them.
I have mixed thoughts on this one, but I do have to admit I overall liked it. It wasn't perfect (I'll get into why later), but I honestly had a good time reading it. I thought the journey the badgers go on was pretty interesting and liked reading the brief human-POV chapters as well. Some of the characters and character relationships are also quite nice.
But I'd be lying if I said this was a great book. For one, this book definitely needed dialogue. This isn't a Call of the Wild-type story where the characters aren't anthropomorphized, in this book the badgers definitely have some human traits. They talk, they cry, they hug, etc. But instead of actually giving them dialogue, the author chose to have what is being said be delivered in a passive way. So instead of the dialogue being '"X", Y said', which would be preferable, all of the dialogue is told to us, like 'Y said that X'. It's a bit of a crossing of the "show, don't tell" line and makes the characters feel a bit indistinct and impersonal at times, because we don't see their thoughts or their actual dialogue. It's not like the characters are completely devoid of personality or anything, but I really feel that actual dialogue would've helped here.
The villain, Kronos, I also thought was quite one-note and boring. I didn't really care for him or his subplot. He felt like such a standard type of xenofiction villain, he didn't really have an interesting backstory or personality or anything.
The story also seems quite lazy with its world-building. The badgers clearly have some form of religion (or at least a form of a belief system), but it feels kind of odd and uninspired because the author borrowed pretty much only human mythology terminology which real badgers definitely wouldn't know about. Terms like Logos, Elysia and Asgard (among others) are thrown around constantly and I kept feeling like this would've worked better if the author had instead made up his own mythology for the badgers to feel more unique and less out of place (think how Richard Adams handled it in Watership Down).
There's also one really sexist part of the book. I mean, in general the book is kinda sexist (with most important characters being male), but at least it didn't feel too terrible back then. But there's literally one section of the book where some female badgers get pregnant while on the journey, and then Beaufort is like "grr how dare these females give into their desires" and this just feels wildly incorrect to me? Why is he only blaming the females and not the males who mated with them? It two to create a baby, so him putting only putting the blame on the females here feels just wrong. Aside from this the book isn't too terrible sexism-wise (though it's definitely a present undertone), but this one remark by Beaufort just made me feel kind of angry, especially since we're supposed to be liking him.
But yeah, overall I do like this book. I just think it could've been a lot stronger had it had actual dialogue and its own mythology. And more distinct characters as a result of the dialogue.
Rating: 3.5/5
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