Book #68 of 2023: The Shattered Horn

Bravelands: Thunder on the Plains #1: The Shattered Horn by "Erin Hunter" (Rosie Best).

In 20 years, "Erin Hunter" has had 396 books published (almost 2 books per month, every month). The name is used for a collective of writers (currently eight writers). The copyright page of the books credits "Working Partners LTD".

The writing group's first (and probably best known) series is the Warrior Cat series (about domestic cats living in the wild), which currently has 121 books and is still ongoing. They have also written series about dogs, Asian animals, and most recently African animals.

I had read a couple of the early Warrior Cat books, until I saw how formulaic they are: A group of young animals are chosen to save the world. Six books later, they have saved the world and the next generation has to save it again.

I picked up The Shattered Horn out of curiosity. After 20 years and almost 400 books, would the authors be following the same formula?

Yep. (They've published almost 400 books, so I guess why change what's clearly working?)

Shattered Horn had three stories woven together. A cheetah named Swift found a mate, a hyena named Tailgrabber was trying to find her place in the world, and a buffalo named Whisper was trying to protect her family.

All three of the storylines were interesting, though I really, really wish the author had done even basic research into the animals she was writing about. The cheetah in the story had retractable claws, roared, and slept in trees... The hyenas were "stereotypical" Hollywood hyenas (no morals, brutal, laughed all the time). I don't know enough about African buffalo to say if the author was off about any of their traits.

The cheetah's (Swift's) story was the best of the three. He started out in a coalition with other males, found a mate, and we got a nice view of life on the African savannah.

The hyena's (Cub's/Tailgrabber's/Breathstealer's) story was more magical (sort of), and so less interesting to me. She kept having visions of the future and she just didn't fit in with her clan.

The buffalo's (Whisper's) story was fine. The bad guy was only believable if you gave him human traits, so that worked less for me, but I still enjoyed those chapters.

The book ended with those three young animals being set up to (wait for it...) save the world. The same formula as the 400 previous books. But even with that, I'd go on to the second book if it were published already, but it doesn't come out until 2024. I'll probably forget this series by then.