"Wolves of the Beyond" by Kathryn Lasky

Alternate post title: "Wolves of the Beyond: Lone Wolf" by Kathryn Lasky

 

I thought this was a Warrior Cats spinoff, but I was actually wrong. It's a Guardians of Ga'Hoole spinoff. (Tangent: I know it's rooted in the setting lore, but that doesn't change the fact that "Ga'Hoole" is kind of a silly name.)

So on the one hand, Akita (a pseudonymous relative) likes this series quite a bit. On the other hand, Squidkid (another pseudonymous relative) finds it kind of lame. After reading this, I must say that my trust in Squidkid's judgment has not been misplaced. (At least when it comes to books; unlike Squidkid, I'm not a fan of horror games.)

You know how I said that The Last Mapmaker is, but shouldn't be, a challenging-the-conventions-of-your-society story? This has the opposite problem, and kudos and some fake internet points to Squidkid for pointing that out. The main character has a birth defect in a society where wolves with birth defects are treated like eighty-second-class citizens, and he just kinda... accepts that? Which could be excused in this one because he only joins wolf society proper at the very end of the book, but according to Squidkid the next books don't have him realizing that the wolves' societal conventions should be changed. 

Granted, I've only read the first book, so I could be misremembering what Squidkid said and thus be wrong about the above paragraph. You never know.

 

Among other things, wolves, bears, owls, wildcats, and caribou (and presumably many other animals) are sentient in the GoG'H/WotB universe. This has the effect of making the wolves' carnivorous actions seem kind of weird. It also has the bizarre effect of making me want to declare that bees are also sentient (but in an alien, hive-mind-ish sort of way) and write a story about them. Warrior Cats--and The Green Ember, to a much lesser extent--also do that to me, and I don't know why.

(I'm pretty sure that Warrior Cats is actually just called Warriors. However, if I just called it Warriors, only Warrior Cats fans would know what I was talking about.)

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: A soft T for child abuse, infant abandonment, and violence.

2 stars.

(Endnote: I could have had the cover image be the one from Scholastic with the instantly respect-sapping red border. However, its respect-sapping effect also applies to things featuring it, so I didn't.)