The third book in the series. Spoilers ahead.
Rhamin and his pack come across a stranger on their land: a white she-wolf named Tala, who has a dark past, having lost her entire pack to hunters. She also seems to have special knowledge regarding the three hunters who tried to kill her. Together with Rasci and the Ben's family, Tala travels back to her homeland in order to find out more about the three men who were after her, as it seems there is some kind of grand conspiracy going on.
The most frustrating book out of the series by far. On the one hand, the first half isn't too bad. It's still properly focused on the wolves as we see the Rhamin pack face conflicts and get to know Tala more. But then about the 40-50% mark the story takes a turn and becomes pretty much only about the humans and their side of the plot. The wolves fade almost completely into the background. Only Rasci and Tala remain relevant, and even they act more so as accessories to the human plot than being actual main characters in this story.
Which is just beyond frustrating. I read these books, wolf xenofiction books, to read about wolves. The first two books also had human subplots, however thankfully those mostly stayed in the background. The books were still very much mainly about Rhamin, Rasci and their pack. But in this book the wolf plot gets thrown almost completely out the window in favor of this, quite frankly, very boring and uninteresting human conspiracy plot. It also doesn't help that the plot becomes rather convoluted and hard to follow after a while.
Why couldn't these books just be about the Rhamin pack? Why do we need these endless boring human subplots taking over the story? What wolf xenofiction enjoyer would even want to read about all this human conspiracy nonsense? Certainly not me. The book's target demographic is also listed as 7-18 years old but I can't really see many children on the younger side of this demographic caring about all this human conspiracy stuff like illegal trading.
The rest of the book is just, eh, not too bad, I suppose, but the human plot taking over the story just kinda ruins it for me. The characters like Rasci and Tala are still interesting enough, however since they are pushed to the side so much they don't get much time to shine. I was also sad to see that Elsie is pretty much forgotten about in this book. She only writes a letter and fades into the background after that. The rest of the Rhamin wolves don't do much, either. The rest of Ben's family I still don't find very interesting as they're just kind of bland and generic do-gooder humans with not that much to them, outside of being able to talk to wolves. It also doesn't help that the human plot feels largely disjointed from the wolf plot, aside from the inciting incident involving both wolves (Tala) and humans (the three men hunting her pack).
The book also sets up some things but then completely forgets about them. There's a few insurgent packs invading Rhamin territory early on, and Solin eventually becomes their leader. You'd think that this would lead to something, but it's not really brought up again after Solin is put in charge. There's also the subplot of a bear cub being raised by the wolves. Again, this is completely forgotten about aside form one or two offhand mentions. Wasted potential to not follow up on these interesting setups, in my opinion.
The text is also still lacking quite a few commas and the author still uses the word "barred" when meaning "bared". The character Ramusan's name is also misspelled as Rasmussen in one instance, for whatever reason. Weird. Cougars are also referred to as "big cats" when they're not as they're not in the genus Panthera.
So yeah, while I did like the first few chapters of this book, eventually it completely went downhill as it became obsessed with the annoying human plot and pretty much forgot about the wolves. Not recommended. If you do read the Rhamin series, stop after book two. Book three is not worth trudging through.
Rating: 2/5
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