River of Lost Bears

Seekers: Return to the Wild #3

by Erin Hunter

Kallik, Toklo, Lusa, and Yakone head away from the ice toward warmer territories. As they approach the mountains, Toklo is faced with an impossible choice. Though he is desperate to leave the struggles of their quest and to find his place in the world of brown bears, is he ready to leave his friends behind?

Genres: Fantasy, Animals, Middle Grade, Fiction, Young Adult, Childrens, Adventure

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 8, 2013

About the author

Erin Hunter is the pseudonym of five people: Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Tui T. Sutherland, Gillian Philip, and Inbali Iserles, as well as editor Victoria Holmes. Together, they write the Warriors series as well as the Seekers and Survivors series. Erin Hunter is working on a new series now called Bravelands.

Erin Hunter is inspired by a love of cats and a fascination with the ferocity of the natural world. As well as having a great respect for nature in all its forms, Erin enjoys creating rich mythical explanations for animal behavior, shaped by her interest in astronomy and standing stones.

Reviews

[Faith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Okay, River of Lost Bears is actually one of the better Seekers books in the series! For a while, my expectations for the latest Erin Hunter books have been pretty low for a variety of reasons I won't get into, but I was pleasantly surprised by this book!

My favorite book out of the new series before I read this one was The Island of Shadows because they encountered Nanulak--a half Grizzly, half Polar bear cub who traveled with the group for a short time, claiming that he had been constantly attacked and bullied by white bears, however the truth was soon revealed that he hated his parents for mating and having him as a result. He couldn't fit in with either species and hated that. And I liked that. It thought that it was a believable situation with natural reactions from all the characters even though Nanulak was a pain in the rump roast.

The Melting Sea I liked to an extent, but Kallik's brother gets on my nerves so much, yet I found a way to sympathize with him. Like I said, I had low expectations and was pleasantly surprised by many of them.

I think the appeal of River of Lost Bears is that they have finally reached land and returned to the forest. I got extremely tired of the bears traveling on the ice, and was glad that we are finally traveling along dry land. The white bears get to relive what it's like to be in brown and black bear territory, and Lusa and Toklo finally get a break and can live properly.

Yakone was just... annoying. I know that he hated the forest and believed that he belonged on the ice, but the truth is, he would have had to come on lake anyway during the burn-sky. I hated that he kept throwing things back at Kallik, like how he left his entire family for her, and how he didn't have to come. If that were my mate/whatever he is to her I would have chased him off! I don't need someone that selfish traveling with me. It's one thing to voice your displeasure, but to directly point out things like that and try to make you guilty is not okay!

I really liked Chenoa too. She was the perfect companion for Lusa. Of course, the Erins couldn't let a fifth bear travel with the group though. For some reason they had to limit the traveling count to four--I don't know why. Chenoa DID NOT have to die. Why the Erins have to mess up the lives of the bears, I don't know, but they are just making things worse. So many horrible things have happened to them--can't the authors give them a break?! Seriously! It just made me mad! Hakan was an ***hole and she deserved to get away from him, but she just got killed on her journey to true freedom! Then, of course, Toklo blamed himself, and Lusa blamed herself, and Kallik tried to cheer them up and it didn't work.

The coyotes... even though it was a good, interesting idea didn't make sense. Yes, it was a large pack, but I don't think that ANY coyote pack in their right mind would attack FOUR adolescent bears. That is just insanity at its fullest. These bears can EASILY overpower three of them at a time, which they proved. Hakan was another case that I found unbelievable. What was wrong inside his head to make him attack Toklo--a bear three times his size--and even entertain the notion that he could win that fight? I don't doubt that there ARE black bears out there who probably COULD beat Grizzlies in a fight, but with his size and Toklo's experience it was just foolish.

You know what else was foolish? Jumping on to a freaking train. What the heck?! Ugh, I hated that ending. Plus, Yakone is still injured and he'll just complain more.

Overall, it wasn't a bad book. Was it the best book out there. No it was not. Were there parts that didn't make sense? Yeah there were. Did Yakone annoy me to the point where I wanted to pull my hair out and shove it down his throat? Yes he did. I would recommend this, but not to anyone. It takes a person who has read Seeker from the very beginning and is familiar with the series, characters, and Erin Hunter's writing style.

[Kaat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ik hou van beren 🙂‍↕️

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn’t really like this book because the pace was very slow and the tone was extremely depressing. It lagged in many places, and it mainly circulated around death. When Toklo, Yakone, Kallik, and Lusa had first run into Hakan and Chenoa, I thought it was bizarre how cheerful and happy Toklo was, nearing his home, and Yakone was so grumpy and rude away from his home environment that I thought they had swapped personalities. But then Toklo got into that fight with Hakan and it saddened him to grouchiness again, while Yakone suddenly perked up. However, the light atmosphere didn’t last long. Lusa was attacked by wolverines and had nasty bites that got infected and would have made her extremely ill if it weren’t for Chenoa, whom Toklo went back to recruit for their little traveling pack with Lusa’s pleas. Then Chenoa showed Toklo the flat-faces (us humans) were cutting down trees, and Chenoa died by falling off a waterfall. A flat-face cub (human child) nearly drowned in a river but was saved by Toklo, even though Lusa was nearly crushed by a couple of humans river-rafting. Lusa became snappy and irritating after Chenoa’s death, making me like her mopey, weakling self much better. Then Yakone threatened to leave Kallik because he never thought of Toklo and Lusa as family, and shortly afterward, his foot was caught in a metal trap, destroying one of his paws and gravely injuring him to the point of critical blood loss. Kallik, Lusa, and Toklo tried to help him, but Toklo wanted to keep moving because coyotes were closing in on them, hungry to eat Yakone after he died. Toklo, Lusa, and Kallik managed to scare the coyotes away by using Yakone as bait and attacking them unexpectedly, but they were only left alone for a short time before the coyotes returned. In the end, the coyotes were still tailing them, Yakone was still dying, and all four of them jumped on a firesnake (train) to get Toklo’s home quicker.

[Lucas Bonner · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW darn the next book come out Jan. 6th!!!! :(

[Abby N Lewis]

The cover looks amazingly beautiful by the way.

[Sean · Rating 5 out of 5]

OP BOOK. FULL OF TENSION.

[Tau · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well this was.... not good.

I had aleady expected the books of the second series to be a lot weaker but this one especially stood out in a negative way. The previous one or two books made a big deal about the bears not taking food from humans anymore. That lesson was completely thrown out the window here - it's not even that they discuss it, the plot point is just completely forgotten.

Another annoying thing is how closely our main characters behave like cats in this book. Stalking prey, hissing, bristling neck/back fur... previous books of this series also made this mistake at times but it's especially conspicuous (and annoying) here.

Overall the story was quite the drag, too, apart from the ending (one of the few segments I actually enjoyed).

[diana · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s frustrating when an old favorite fails you, but I just can’t take the repetitiveness of this story anymore. There’s only so many times I can take these bears wandering around and hunting and arguing about the same things over and over again. The characters "change" every two chapters, and never do these changes stick. I’m not giving up on this series yet, but it won’t take much for me to quit.

2.5/5 stars

[Pinchy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am Anfang fand ich es nicht sooo toll wie due anderen Bände, aber die Autoren haben es gerade noch so "gerettet"
Chenoas Tod hat mich schon etwas "Mitgerissen", aber ich fand es gut, dass "mal wieder" jemand stirbt (sonst hätte ich dem Buch nur 3 sterne gegeben...)
Okay sie hätte vllt rtwas länger leben können, aber es war übelst spanned ab dem Moment.
Jedoch fand ich diese Deprimierende Stimmung nicht so toll, nachvollziehbar, aber naja... Deshalb 4 sterne
Trzdm immernoch super Buchreihe ❤️

[YouStupidBloodyHamburger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Why is yakone here he’s useless. He never gets his own pov so when he’s rude I can only think man this guy is really annoying. Hes only here to be Kalliks boyfriend and be carcass bait in this book that’s kind of an L. I really dont know what kallik sees in him she was actually like a good friend before to the other bears but he came and messed it up.

[IRIDESCENZA · Rating 4 out of 5]

Damn, this book...

At first I didn't think much of it, nothing really stood up to me. Then about 50% in, things started to really pull forward and oh goodness, I was so scared at times for our rag-tag of bears. I am afraid of what's going to happen in the next book. As much as it pains me, they have to separate at one point.

What a much needed read after that last one.

[Julia Knoblich · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like all of the other books in the series, this book brings me to so many places! I get lost in the outside world whenever I'm reading, especially this book! The writing is beautiful with so many details.

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

An adventure story of 4 bears- a brown bear, a black bear and 2 polar bears-trying to make it to the brown bear's home territory. They encounter a waterfalls, a bear trap and a group of hungry coyotes on their journey.

[Lily · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wish I could give more stars

[Francisco · Rating 5 out of 5]

These books are awsome!

[Krys · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 stars

[Kaylee · Rating 2 out of 5]

High two stars. This book was. . . Really bad.

Seekers has been slowly deteriorating in quality since the first book, in my opinion, and this is just the latest in the pattern. This book was a SLOG. There is NOTHING worthwhile in this story that separates it from the 8 books that preceded it.

The writing is the same Erin style it always is, interesting and familiar, but not outstanding. The problem is the story, as usual. It was just so. Dang. Boring. Seekers is always at a disadvantage in the plot department compared to the other Erin books solely due to the fact that it centers on walking, AKA the most notoriously boring plot direction in Erin Hunter books. After 8 books, I am sick and tired of reading about these bears walking. We need something new. This book returns us to the woods, which should be a nice change of pace from the last few, except this story beat has already been done twice before in this series. A new character arrives and is taken away again before the end of the book by the magic of ‘the plot necessitates it’ (but it actually doesn’t), just like in the first book of ‘Return to the Wild,’ and whatever book Kallik’s brother attempted to join them for (book 3? I can’t remember). The only newish thing is the coyotes, but they not only stretched my suspension of disbelief but also didn’t really up the stakes at all, at least for me. We know none of these bears are going to die. The Erins are not brave enough to do that, and they clearly have a rule that there have to be four bears traveling together in these books, no more and no less, or Chenoa wouldn’t have died. Therefore no one will die, and the coyotes are just another mindless obstacle for the bears to get past.
Not to mention, none of these plot points have any lasting significance. Chenoa was forgotten after fiveish chapters of being dead, and I’m willing to bet the coyotes will come up maybe once next book, if at all. This is also a character issue, but it makes the whole story feel pointless when nothing has a lasting impact on anyone or anything. Ujurak comes back at random times for seemingly no reason, so he doesn’t even feel special anymore. All this just served to make the story completely useless in the grand scheme of things. You could delete this entire book from the series and nothing would change, except you’d have to add a paragraph explaining how Yakone lost some toes. That’s IT. It’s very disappointing, and to me it just seems to defeat the purpose of telling this story. There clearly isn’t enough content to fill six books in this series, so why did they try to drag it out so long?

The characters make it even worse.
There is nothing separating Kallik, Yakone, Lusa, and Toklo except where they will inevitably end up living.
Toklo spends the book wishing for the forest. He’s sad about Chenoa and has vague trauma for exactly two chapters before forgetting she exists. He retains his realistic attitude but has nothing new to speak of.
Kallik is a nothing character again. She has nothing new and only worries about Yakone.
Yakone is just annoying. He has nothing new and purpose except to create tension in the group, but he completely changes his personality after Chenoa dies because that’s the new source of tension. And he gets injured at the end. I can hope that the next book does something with this injury, but I have a feeling it will only be another obstacle to overcome, not an actual exploration of him as a character.
Lusa was cute with Chenoa but her arc felt like it was cut off by Chenoa’s death. It seemed like she was being set up for an arc about taking care of others and being strong despite her size (something the Erins try to tell us every book while consistently showing us the opposite), only for Chenoa to die before she could prove this. Lusa is sad for five chapters and then back to normal. I loved her passion about the bear spirits; it reminded me of arc 1 Lusa. I need more like that from her: more identifiable traits that make her stand out. And most importantly, they need to LAST. This is true for all the leads; there has to be consequences to these story beats or there is literally no point in these books.
Chenoa existed to die, which was really unfortunate because what we got of her was interesting and she had the potential to be a fun new addition to the group. But no. We have to have 4 bears only, no more and no less.

The villains are the coyotes, shiv I already talked about, and Hakan at the start. Like Chenoa, he was a means to an end (but at least we know what that end was with him). He was alright as an antagonist; I just wish, again, that he had any significance whatsoever to the broader story.

This was incredibly disappointing. I’m definitely worried for the next book, seeing as book 4 is typically the weakest in Erin Hunter series. Also I’ve technically read it before, but have literally no memory of what happens. Hopefully it will at least be more relevant than this one.

SERIES RATINGS:
Island of Shadows: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Melting Sea: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
River of Lost Bears: ⭐️⭐️
Forest of Wolves: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Burning Horizon: ⭐️⭐️⭐️
The Longest Day: ⭐️⭐️⭐️

[Isabella Wood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Took me until now to realize this series was an allegory for Christ

[Cosmic Critters · Rating 5 out of 5]

bears traveling is awesome

[Ash Ebrahim · Rating 2 out of 5]

I did not like the book. The end was Ok but I seriously have no idea where Erin Hunter team are taking this series.
Ok so this is the third book in the second series of Seekers but to me it's more of a 9th book in the Seekers series. And Let's see why I have some issue with number NINE

I think that is enough reason to hate number 9.
The boring as a whole was plain BORING. Chenoa popped out (a black bear) -at least she was better than Nanulak- and all of a sudden she has family-bear issue that we have to endure in the first 100 pages. After that the 5 bears just face some shitty stuff across their ways like always but this time I either got too bored or most of the dangers were repetitive since they used almost everything in the other books, even if they were not in Seekers I've seen them in the cat series Warriors and let's hope when I read Survivors I don't see repeated danger that animals face.
As a whole the book was boring and in my opinion one of the worst books in the Seekers Quest along with the 7th book.
Luckily I'm a patient reader and I will give this series 3 chanced for the next 3 books and if they extended it then bye-bye Erin.
3 Seekers books left for me to read. 5 Survivors books left and 6 Warriors books left to read. I already gave up on the Warriors series but decided to read the prequel series since it's interesting.

[Micayla Berry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book. There are a lot of interesting conflicts in this one. It is interesting to see how Yakone adjusts to being on land. It's nice to see because of how long we saw Toklo and Lusa struggle while out on the ice. It gives him perspective. He becomes kind of a pain later in this book, but a lot of it is at least somewhat understandable given his situation. You can't help but feel sorry for him. Chenoa is a great character. She has a lot in common with the other characters. Her friendship with Lusa is great; she has herb knowledge like Ujurak. Her character also compliments Toklo well. She is a bit more mature than Lusa. I like how Toklo wants to help Chenoa, but is conflicted because he understands how Hakan feels, even if his behavior is abusive. I like how Hakan is a nuanced villain. You feel sorry for him in the end. Toklo is also afraid of accepting another bear into the group because of all the bears he's lost before. He feels responsible for everyone's safety. The wolverines and coyotes are very scary in this one. I also feel sorry for Lusa. A lot of the plot of this book revolves around her trying to save the trees. It is kind of boring though at that part. This book can feel pretty depressing despite the optimistic first half.

[Carrie Breton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Awesome but....

Don't really like how the one who always needs saving is the little black bear I just think that it's been like 3 books since maybe toklo got hurt bad but what ever still a great book all the same

[Alyssa · Rating 4 out of 5]

These bears would make suuuuch great friends... Since Yakone was lame, Toklo was like, "Dudes there are coyotes tracking us, we havve to pretends that Yakone is dead- or bait." and he and his group let the coyotes nip Yakone and then they charged.

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erin Hunter needs to include a package of tissues with each of her books!! I'm glad I wasn't at work when I read chapter (16 I think it was). I was a mess!

[Darren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the Seekers series. There's always a lot of emotion and spirituality within the stories. I can't imagine how it will end.

[Bryn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.

[Racquel · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was boring at the start, but good at the end.

[Lauren]

I have read this book it is awesome. What will happen ? You have to read it to find out.

[Felkaissi4 · Rating 4 out of 5]

The bears must now help Toklo find a home, on the way they meet a back bear which travels with them. She falls down a waterfall and dies, the bears are saddened, but continue their journey.

[Justin G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book had nice conflicts as Toklo Lusa and Kallik carry Yakone as the coyotes follow them. The next book should be better