Believathon 2019 - Spirit Walker

• Title And Author: Spirit Walker by Michelle Paver
• Publisher: Orion Children’s Books
• Physical, eBook or Audiobook: eBook 
• Bought, Borrowed or Gifted: Bought 
• Length: 320 Pages

My first Believathon read for this month! Who’s excited?! 

So, as you know from last month, I devoured the first book in the series, Wolf Brother, most of it on the plane to New York (link to my write-up is here!). I love this world and I made a decision that I will try and read each book in the series once a month in the lead-up to the newest book, Viper’s Daughter, being published in April 2020. 

So, here we are with book 2 of the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series! 

Several months after the events of Wolf Brother, a strange sickness is creeping through the Stone Age Forest. It threatens the Raven Clan and after destroying the Bear with the aid of the World Spirit, Torak thinks he can find the cure. Word is that the Seal Clan has a cure and Torak decides to travel to them to find it…

I’m going to admit that this didn’t sweep me away the same way as Wolf Brother. I did stop a few chapters in to focus on a few other reads as I thought it was too soon to read this after Wolf Brother, as I don’t like reading the same author back to back. 

I do think that because of this and the fact this book is much darker than Wolf Brother might have affect my opinions of this. Because I did like this. I like knowing more about this world and seeing the characters, but the tone shift made me go “Oh! This is a middle grade read and yet the tone…!”

I think I fell into that trap that adults fall into for a little while. We think because children’s books are for children, the stories should have a light tone to them. I think the tone shift surprised me, plus I like reading fun, fluffy middle grades. I’m not sure reading middle grade that have a dark edge to them. And I should. And there’s a few middle grade books on my radar that do tackle darker issues so you might be seeing them in the coming few months.

But yes, I did like Spirit Walker, but not as much as Wolf Brother. And I’m trying to figure out when in December am going to read the third book in the series, Soul Eater.