Not entirely sure where this is positioned in the Wolves of Elementa series, but my guess is after book two but maybe even later. Ah well, spoilers ahead.
Chitter is a coyote who lives on the island of Discord. Here, she struggles to fit in due to her open-mindedness and willingness to mingle with strangers. One day, she comes across a sea-wolf who introduces himself as Benthos, and the duo form a friendship. Benthos is at first despised by the xenophobic and racist coyotes, but when the wolf saves their lives one day, he is hailed as a hero. Yet this causes a rift to form between Chitter and Benthos. Chitter starts to wonder whether she can trust Benthos at all.
Okay, so, I will be talking some negative points in this review, but I will preface it with this: I did like this book overall. It was an enjoyable and interesting story to read. Short but sweet, it wasn't some sweeping epic, but it didn't need to be. Chitter was also an enjoyable protagonist, I think that she's my second-favorite Elementa character after Sandstorm.
But this book does have one major thing working against it: how the themes and morals of xenophobia and racism are executed. Basically, the story is setting up the moral to be: be open-minded, don't be racist, don't be xenophobic, etc. Which are all good morals to have.
But then you realize how the book executes it, and boy, it's not good. Because Chitter's anti-racism and anti-xenophobia are in the end proven to be wrong when Benthos betrays the coyotes. So all of Chitter's positive qualities, the ones that tie directly into the moral and themes (her open-mindedness, her lack of xenophobia and racism) are shown to be a negative thing in this situation. Benthos is evil. The coyotes were right to be xenophobic/racist towards him in this story.
Which just goes straight against the moral which was being set up. The only thing that changes in coyote society by the end is that they're less xenophobic towards other coyotes, but they're still xenophobic and racist towards other species so in the end barely any progress was made. Even Chitter is made to change her tune and becomes less open-minded towards strangers.
So basically this is a terrible moral to send, even if it probably wasn't the intended moral the author was trying to get across to the audience. But since Benthos is the only wolf we see in this story, with no "good" wolves featuring, we basically get the impression that all wolves are bad and that xenophobia/racism towards them is justified in this situation. Yikes.
It also just feels old that the author is tackling this moral again. This is the fifth Elementa book, and yet these canines aren't any less racist and xenophobic than they were in book one. After a while it starts to get old and one starts to wonder when the author will start tackling different morals and tropes. It just gets a bit repetitive after a while.
So yeah, don't get me wrong, I did enjoy this book overall, it wasn't bad. But its moral was handled terribly and sends an unintentional pro-racism and pro-xenophobia message. The main character of Chitter was enjoyable, Benthos made for a decent antagonist, the story was engaging enough, but I cannot get past the poor handling of the moral.
Rating: 3.5/5
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