Review: Wild Born

Wild Born (Spirit Animals #1) by Brandon Mull

In the fantasy world of Erdas, each child who comes of age must go through a special ceremony. The purpose of this ritual is to see if the child summons a spirit animal; a special animal with which you form a spiritual/mental bond with that grants additional strengths to both human and animal. It’s kind of like your own personal animal best friend. Conor, Abeke, Meilin, and Rollan all summon spirit animals. But not just any animals. The wolf, leopard, panda, and falcon who apper during their ceremony are special animals, great beasts; animals of legend who have been foretold to return to Erdas in its greatest need. Together the four must work together and learn how to use their spirit animals in battle before the sinister forces taking over Erdas one country at a time have a chance to succeed.

I went into this one with pretty high expectations, mostly because I just love Brandon Mull. On the other hand, I’m always a bit worried with these multi-author series that Scholastic does (39 Clues and Infinity Ring being two other examples) just because I’m worried about continuity between character traits, world settings, plots, etc. I’m happy to say that Mull does a good job introducing the series. For a book that’s much shorter than many introductory middle grade fantasy books, there’s a nice balance between character introduction and the initial conflict of the series’ overall plot. Readers really only get glimpses of settings and characters other than the main four characters, but I felt it was enough to keep me satisfied, expecting that further explorations will occur in later books in the series. While there may not be a lot of substance literarily to this series, I think the kid appeal is definitely there, especially for kids who like books with animal characters. I plan on continuing with the rest of the series, which is always a good indication it hasn’t lost my interest so far.

Shady Glade Rating: 4 leaves

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