Book Review
Title: Warrior of the Wild
Author: Tricia Levenseller
Genre: YA/Fantasy/Historical
Rating: ****
Review: I have read Daughter of the Pirate King from this author and loved it although I have yet to pick up Daughter of the Siren Queen. We are introduced to Rasmira, who is the daughter of the village leader and is preparing for the trial that all people must take at 18 to prove they are strong enough to handle their chosen profession, in the case of Rasmira and her best friend Torrin, they are warriors and failure isn’t acceptable especially for Rasmira. However, she already has a lifelong enemy in the form of Harvard, and I have the feeling he is planning something for the trial, but we don’t know anything concrete when Torrin and Rasmira sneak out to witness with Payment. In this world, it seems that gods live among mortals and one of these, Peruxolo, demands payment from her village as well as others, each village provides a specific thing and Rasmira’s village provides meat for the god, others provide gems or even young girls or risk being slaughtered by the god. However, on their way back they are caught by Rasmira’s father after running into Harvard. The boys are punished for being out when they shouldn’t but Rasmira is taken home, it turns out that Rasmira’s mother didn’t want children and hoped to have one son and no others but she ended up giving birth to 6 daughters and can’t have any more after Rasmira. Her mother craves her father’s attention but Rasmira gets most of it as she is the only daughter that declared she wanted to be a warrior and is the one therefore that will take her father’s place as village leader after passing her trial. On the day of the trial, they are to enter a maze filled with ziken, creatures that eat humans, and in order to pass they have to kill at least one ziken and avoid being bitten by them. Anyone who fails will be banished from the village and given a mattugr, or challenge that always ends in death. However, Harvard is making comments like he knows something is going to happen to Rasmira during the trial, but we don’t have time to dwell on that as the trial begins.
As we approach the ¼ mark in the novel, I wasn’t majorly loving the story as the writing seemed a little bland to the vivid descriptions Levenseller uses in Daughter of the Pirate King. During the trial, Torrin and Rasmira stick together battling and both have seemingly survived the trial only for Torrin to betray her and make a severed ziken head bite her, so she ultimately fails. I have to say I wasn’t happy with Torrin’s betrayal as there seems to be nothing leading up to it, since he has been her friend for weeks and was even speaking about asking permission to court her only for him to stab her in the back. I think I will give it until the ¼ mark and if I am still not feeling the novel I will most likely DNF it. After failing her trial Rasmira has one day to pack everything she needs for the wild and say her goodbyes before she has to head into the wild to try and complete her mattugr. Despite her attempt to show Torrin’s betrayal the only person that witnessed it was her mother and she isn’t going to speak up in Rasmira’s defence. This was another thing I didn’t understand about the book was Rasmira’s relationship with her mother. First off we learn that Rasmira’s mother didn’t want children which would lead most to believe that she wouldn’t want to attention of her husband in the first place and she had already had 5 daughter before Rasmira and has really good relationships with them. The only thing that could be responsible for her hatred of her youngest daughter is the fact she wanted to become a warrior and gained her father’s attention, but this contradicts the first thing we learn about Rasmira’s mother, so it just didn’t make sense. In fact, nothing about this book so far makes any sense.
As we cross the ¼ mark in the novel, Rasmira is sent out into the wild with her mattugr, to kill the god Peruxolo and free their village from his influence but the wild doesn’t seem as deadly as she was led to believe. This is further shown when she meets Iric and Soren who has been living in the wild for over a year and they are from other villages. Both were banished and yet they have made a home in the wild and if I was in Rasmira’s position I would have just shacked up with them as they seem to be perfectly fine, if you discount the information that Soren was almost eaten by a dozen ziken. Rasmira follows the trial left by the wagons given to Peruxolo and eventually finds him home at the base of a mountain but the god is immortal so he can’t be killed and yet she decides to see if there is a weak spot she can exploit and clings to the slim hope of completing her mattugr. I am going to give this book a little more time but I still wasn’t majorly invested, mostly because we don’t really get to know Rasmira or Torrin well enough before the trial so the betrayal didn’t hold much weight and everything we have seen about the supposed “deadly” wild has been shown to be the opposite if two boys can live for over a year without anything serious happening to them. Rasmira is weary of both boys given the way boys have always treated her in the past especially Torrin. However, when she learns that certain mythological beasts are real, she comes to the boy’s aid when it gets hold of Iric. After rescuing him from drowning and the beast lurking the water, she learns that Iric’s mattugr is to kill the beast in the water which is made difficult since he can’t swim. However, Rasmira explodes of them calling them cowards since they have been in the wild a year and accomplished nothing, she is especially mad at Iric who wants to return home to Aros, the man he loves but has done nothing to achieve that. I saw her as selfish, yes, her task might be impossible and Iric’s isn’t, but she doesn’t understand that some people won’t carelessly waste their lives when they could have a semi-decent life.
As we approach the halfway mark in the novel, Soren makes himself as annoying as possible but popping up whenever Rasmira doesn’t want him there, but he is helping her, giving her a trap for catching meat and showing her some edible plants. Soren, we learn purposely failed his test when Iric did so he could protect his friend, Iric was a metal worker and yet ended up taking the warrior’s test. Apart from one encounter with the god, Peruxolo nothing overall eventful has happened and even that encounter wasn’t the best. As time goes on, the trio stick close together despite the tensions between Iric and Rasmira, but everything changes after Rasmira has another encounter with the god. She has been trying to find a weakness in him and his defences and finds one. His defences won’t allow metal to encounter so Rasmira could pass through, but she couldn’t take her armour or axe meaning she would be completely defenceless, but she has also learned the god can bleed and therefore be killed. Despite this, she isn’t getting along with the boys as she refuses to abandon her beliefs and shuns theirs and she knows they have survived so long because they are together and needs to make things right. She realises that Iric and Soren mattugrs are based around what they fear most. Iric is water and Soren’s used to be heights, so he has to collect as single feather from the fearsome otti. She comes to the conclusion that they can help each other complete their mattugrs and they can all go home to the people they love and she proposes this idea to Iric who agrees to think about it but what is astounding is how much the boys have manage to create in the year they have been banished. They have a home, traps for hunting and Iric even has a completely forge where he can create things.
As we cross into the second half of the novel, things are getting more interesting, but the pace is plodding and slow, so I did find myself getting bored at times. That soon changes when Iric agrees to Rasmira’s plan of them helping each other to complete their trials and go home and Iric has an insane fear of water, they start with his. Over the next few weeks, Rasmira spends the time teaching Iric to swim and hold his breath underwater but during this time they also learn to trust each other, Iric and Soren are finally able to talk about their banishment and while Iric hasn’t forgiven him, they have taken the first step to mending their relationship. Iric is also the one to point out that Rasmira is a natural leader, although she has never thought of herself as such, and with him she learns that she has been going about gaining respect in the wrong way and vows when she returns home she is going to make things right. They all also learn a lot about their respective villages and Rasmira finds that some things are done differently and ultimately better in the boy’s village and stores this information for later. Between his swimming lessons and surviving, Iric has begun working on the armour for Rasmira to face the god again and he also make spears for them to deal with the beast in the water. As they head to the lake once more, they decide to attempt their plan but Iric also chickens out as his fear returns but together Soren and Rasmira manage to get him to try. However, the beast won’t be easily caught and when Iric demands Soren holds onto the rope tethering him to the beast he is dragged in and Rasmira and Iric quickly follow. At first it seems like the beast swims away, but it sneaks up on Rasmira, but she manages to injure it. Over the next several minutes they injure the beast greatly but it also gets itself tangled up in their ropes, restricting its movement and ultimately Rasmira manages to clamp its jaw shut while Iric and Soren prepare to drag the creature from the water as its body means it will be useless on land.
As we approach the ¾ mark in the novel, the trio together take down the beast and Iric cuts off its head as his mattugr demands which means it is now time for them to move onto Soren’s test. As Iric isn’t a warrior, they decide that only Soren and Rasmira should climb the mountain and it seems the best idea, however, before they spend any amount of time on the mountain they learn it could be even more dangerous that forest where their temporary home is located as there are wild cats to deal with. As they climb the mountain they find that the god’s power extends to various parts of their climb forcing them to alter their course, although along the way the pair become closer as Rasmira is finally coming to understand what she wants not what she has been told to want and what she wants right now is Soren and he is more than happy to be wanted by her. As they get close to the peak they get their first glimpse of the legendary otti after an encounter with a wild cat and Soren finally has the hope that he can go home, although he asks Rasmira is there is room in her life for him and there obviously is. The pair reach the peak and come up with a plan to temporarily trap the otti as it has chicks to take care of and while they manage to get a feather, things begin falling apart after that as the otti takes off with Soren still attached to it and Rasmira has to chase after them. After convincing Soren to let go off the bird over a copse of trees she manages to “catch” him but the bird attacks but together Soren and Rasmira manage to get it to fly off. As the pair head down the mountain eager to return to Iric with the good news that they have completed Soren’s mattugr, Rasmira finds a strange rock, a lodestone, that sends her iron armour flying away when she tries to bring it closer. She realises in this moment that Peruxolo hasn’t been using magic on her but rather is armour and weapons are made of this lodestone which means she physically can’t get close as it works like magnets. Armed with this new information, Rasmira knows that with her new ziken hide armour she will be able to get close to the god, the only thing she needs is a new weapon as she can’t use her own axe and the dagger that Peruxolo stabbed her with isn’t going to be enough. After returning to Iric, he agrees to make her a new axe out of the lodestone and they put a plan together. The plan is for Rasmira to travel to Iric and Soren’s village and see if they are received back, if they aren’t she will face the god alone but if they are she will publicly challenge him in the clearing where the Payment takes place and hopefully the knowledge of his secret will be enough to make the fight fair.
As we cross into the final section of the novel, I was eager to see how Rasmira is going to possibly complete her mattugr and if she does what will happen afterwards. As the final challenge has been issued and approaches quickly, I couldn’t wait to see the final battle. After Soren and Iric are hailed as heroes, she knows her own return will be just as grand if she can kill the god, but she has also learned much about the god and feels ready to face him. After Soren returns from delivering the messages to all seven villages and Iric forges her new axe the day has finally arrived. As she waits for the god to arrive she is reunited with her whole family and her mother even offers to tell the truth about the trial as her guilt has been eating away at her in the months that Rasmira has been banished in the wilds but she tells her mother not to as there is something going on with Peruxolo that needs to be uncovered. While the battle between Rasmira and the Peruxolo is long and hard and she suffers many injuries, there was no doubt in my mind that she was going to be the victor and she tells the truth about this so-called god. It turns out Peruxolo is more of a title than a name passed down to men banished into the wild in order to claim the Payment from the villages are revenge for being banished in the first place and since she has not only killed the “God” she has also freed the villages from the Payment, meaning people won’t starve or be killed for no reason. Rasmira shows her true capabilities as a leader here and after returning home she is asked to hand out the punishments for her mother and Torrin. As her mother is already repenting for her actions, she decides that she can stay in the village but she can’t come anywhere near her unless Rasmira seeks her out but she banished both Torrin and Harvard into the wild but without a mattugr, all they have to do is survive three months, the length of time she spent in the wild and they can return home. I loved the fact that Soren decides to move to her village to remain by her side, and the character growth especially in Rasmira through the novel is immense but Soren and Iric both mature a lot as well. Overall, I found the first half of Warrior of the Wild to be slow and a bit drab but once they begin gelling as a unit and working on completing their mattugrs the story is taken to a whole new level. While Warrior of the Wild is completely different from Levenseller’s previous book, I am eager to see more from this author in the future.
Buy it here:
Paperback/Hardcover: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
Kindle Edition: amazon.co.uk amazon.com
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