This one is a release I've been anticipating. Spoilers ahead.
After the loss of their mother and father, Nyathera is a young lioness tasked with keeping her pride together. But this is difficult with there being frequent arguments between her and her sisters, particularly between her and the muscle of the group, Mkali. Then three male lions show up and kill the current pride Protector and cubs, with the newcomers joining the pride. This leads to even more friction between the individuals of the pride. Wil Nyathera be able to keep her promise and keep the pride together?
A decent xenofiction, I'd say. I think that this is the author's debut novel? It's pretty solid if so. I do have a few qualms, but I'll start with what I liked: I liked the main character of Nyathera and especially Mkali. I thought that they were both interesting and their individual storylines kept me thoroughly engaged. I also really enjoyed seeing Mkali from unusual friendships with an orphaned cheetah cub and a solitary leopard who just wants company. Nyathera's part of the story was interesting as well, with her slowly growing closer to one of the males who took over the pride, all the while she herself is still pregnant with the previous Protector's cubs. It's all good an interesting stuff.
I also liked how the lion behavior is (mostly) accurate. Obviously some artistic liberties were taken for the sake of the plot (mostly on Mkali's side, as irl a lioness likely wouldn't fraternize with a leopard and a cheetah), but as far as the pride-life goes most stuff is pretty accurate. I also appreciate the author showing prides not as strictly patriarchal, but also having a matriarchal/matrilineal structure. A lot of popular lion media depicts lion prides as patriarchal only, which is likely based on somewhat outdated research, as in real prides females definitely also get a say in stuff. So I liked this Matriarch/Protector leadership structure the pride has going on.
Now for the things I think could've been improved. My main gripe with this book is that there is a lot of repetitious feeling conversations, particularly arguments. A lot of this book is just characters standing around arguing. Like it makes up a pretty significant portion of some chapters. This in turn made the book feel repetitive and also wasn't as fun to read. I was definitely engaged by these characters, but reading them having argument after argument gets rather tiring.
Also, I feel that the tragedy of the sisterhood falling apart wasn't as emotionally impactful as it could've been, because we never get to truly experience the sisters in the "before days", before their parents died and before they started constantly arguing. A big part of the emotional core of this story is the tragedy of the four sisters falling out. This definitely would've had a bigger emotional punch if we could've experienced the sisters how they were before the pride got taken over, back when they were close. Right now we start the story off at a point where the sisters are already starting to fall apart.
But overall I do think that this is a rather solid xenofiction. I look forward to book two.
Rating: 3.5/5
No comments:
Post a Comment