Another book I've been meaning to obtain for ages but never got until now. Thanks to my brother and his girlfriend giving it to me for my birthday, I now own a copy! Spoilers ahead.
Chiri is a feral dog who lives in the wild. He especially doesn't like wolves, after a black wolf's pack killed his family. Then the young mutt meets the man Link Stevens, and now he has to decide what he is: A wild animal mistrustful of humans, or Stevens' friend who will join him in the fight against the wolves.
Overall I liked this book quite a bit. Not my favorite naturalistic animal xenofiction (NAX) animal I've ever read, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. I was pretty hooked on the journey of Chiri (and his mother, Queen, up until the point she got killed by the pack). Just these dogs trying to survive in the wild was pretty compelling.
Especially once Queen and Chiri's siblings died things got interesting, because Chiri is still a dog and a very young one at that, so he doesn't have the same survival chances as a wild canine with a pack would have at that age. But he persists and turns out to be a pretty tough bugger with a keep instinct for survival, which was cool to see. I see Chiri as a pretty solid canine NAX protagonist along the lines of Buck from Call of the Wild or Kazan from the book of the same title. Chiri's mother, Queen, also has a few chapters early on in the story, and they were neat as well.
I was slightly less interested in the human-POV chapters starring Link, but they weren't downright bad, either. And they did add more context we wouldn't have gotten with only Chiri and Queen's POVs. So even if they weren't my favorites, I can let these chapters slide pretty easily.
If I do have a critique, I guess that it is pretty sexist (in classic NAX fashion). And this sexism isn't like, deconstructed, or anything. It just happens and we're supposed to deal with it. There's only one female character or note in this story (Queen), and she dies a miserable death. So not a very good look for the writing on the female characters, but I also acknowledge that this is a pretty old book. But still, not great.
So yeah, overall a pretty solid xenofiction. If you like The Call of the Wild, Kazan and White Fang I think you'll have a good time with this one.
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