Spirit Animals – Fall of the Beasts 3 – The Return

Varian Johnson's The Return is a Spirit Animals adventure for 9 year olds in which the bond between four young heroes and their animals is starting to come apart.

What happens

This one drops you straight into the middle of things. The friends have been split up. Conor and Meilin are stranded on a stinking yellow beach under the ground, with a quiet boy called Takoda. Their guide Xanthe has vanished. Their plan is to cross the sea in a hollowed-out giant gourd with a mushroom stalk for an oar (yes, really).

Conor is in real trouble. A parasite is creeping up his arm towards his neck, and he can feel something called the Wyrm pulling at his mind.

Meanwhile Abeke and Rollan are sailing to Nilo with Tasha, a girl who has only just called her spirit animal. They need to reach Cabaro the Great Lion before their enemy Zerif does. Cabaro isn't known for liking humans, and the fortress he's living in fires a cannonball at them as a warning.

The saddest part is what's happening to the bonds. Abeke can hardly feel her leopard Uraza any more. Rollan can only see through his falcon's eyes in short bursts, and it makes him feel sick. For readers who love the animals as much as the kids, that's a very real worry.

There are some lovely quiet moments too. Takoda is bonded to Kovo, the enormous ape who once caused a war, and nobody trusts him. But when Takoda is grieving for Xanthe, Kovo makes the sign for sorry. Rollan still cracks jokes, most of them terrible, and a new grown-up called Dante cooks their first proper meal since they ran out of everything but sardines and pickled cabbage.

Be ready for the prologue, which is creepy in a body-horror sort of way. A grey worm burrows into a man's wound and wriggles up under his skin to his face while he claws at it. There's grief in these chapters too, with characters remembering parents and friends lost in earlier wars.

For a reader who's squeamish, that first chapter is the hardest part. For one who's already hooked on the series, it's a gripping, emotional instalment.

What to read next

This is definitely not the place to start. If your reader hasn't met Conor, Meilin, Abeke and Rollan yet, go back to the very beginning with Wild Born, where four children turn eleven, drink the Nectar and find out whether an animal will answer.