Book Review: Coorinna by Erle Wilson

 

Well, you know me. I love reading xenofiction and thylacines are my favorite animals (yes, even surpassing wolves). Sadly there is barely any thylacine xenofiction out there. I wanted to read Coorinna before, but legal ebooks and English physical copies are very, very hard to come by without having to pay a whole lot. So I settled for getting a German copy instead. 

Spoilers ahead.

Coorinna is a young thylacine who grows up in Tasmanian nature. During his survival he loses his mother and finds a mate and has offspring. However, he and his family also have to face the dangers of other predators and sheep farmers who see the thylacines as a threat.

Overall I consider this a pretty solid xenofiction book. I am not usually the biggest fan of the more classical type of xenofiction stories such as Tarka the Otter or Kazan, but I can still like them if they're handled well enough. And with Coorinna I think that Wilson did well.

The locations this story takes place in feel real and described well, and I also liked the various characters we got to meet, particularly Coorinna and his mate, Loongana. I would be lying if I said they were amazingly written characters or anything, but they are still decently rounded for animal characters who don't have any dialogue. 

The story also managed to strike some emotional chords with me, especially when several major thylacine characters die throughout it. Animal death always makes me sad but when it's thylacines it always hits me extra hard. So whenever Coorinna's mother or joey or someone else perished, it was legit really sad to me and made me quite emotional. Props on the book for managing to touch me like this.

I do have to bring up that one of the characters is named after a racist slur, which was definitely the worst aspect of the book. The character barely appears and isn't named often but it was still jarring as hell and offensive.

Overall I think this is a rather neat xenofiction book. I do wish there was more thylacine xenofiction out there, and that this one was more widely available, but for what it is, it is very solid and really managed to hit me emotionally when it wanted to.

Rating: 4/5