Clive Woodall

Book one continues in an abysmal mess of Tomar who banned all eating of insects... causing an overpopulation of insects. And. The birds are starving to death due to not having enough food.

That's it.

How is this enforced? By Tomar going full out-of-character and performing ritual executions. Yes. Starving birds are being brutally murdered for eating their literal prey.

Oh, and the Nazi main villain bird survived. Guess being shot with a gun doesn't kill a magpie. Somehow! They're very small, and the shot to him was definitely fatal. Guess bullets aren't what they seem to be in this world.

The bugs somehow now have the power to rise up and kill everyone so that validates Tomar's fear of them and his slaughtering any starving bird that is caught consuming insects. The totalitarianism I covered in my One for Sorrow review all ends with...

The Rapture!

Yes. A rapture happens and all birds die and go to either heaven or hell. The bad ones are horribly tortured by a great mass of magical white wolves and the ones who are good go peacefully to heaven. Because nuking the world and a rapture totally fits into this book series.

0.5 stars. Woodall how the hell does a bird survive being shot and stay a villain and a threat? That gun totally killed him, fuck off with that. I could accept everything else -save the rapture- but the bad guy surviving that graphic death in One for Sorrow.… (meer)

I had heard this one was one of the worst pieces of xenofiction in the big pumpkin patch of xenofictions out there. Didn't quite believe that -how can you mess up writing birds?- turned out it was really bad and truly a fast slide down a rabbit hole of squick. I've read a lot of specist content, but we go beyond that. So--

Holy shitake mushrooms we have got to talk about how racist, sexist, classist, and awful this book is, and I'm not sure I can be the person to do that. Nazism and birds are not what I came into this book expecting, but it was what I got. Bird Hitler.

Step one to reading One for Sorrow: Take everything you know about birds, symbiotic relationships, and how birds coexist and throw it in the trash. Step two: Next take all those species tidbits and anything you've read, seen on Youtube, or grown up knowing, and throw it in the trash.
Seriously, out with all of that.

This is not a kid's book, but it is often in the kid's section, much like Warrior Cats(incest, pedophilia, gutting), and other adult books: Plague Dogs. We really need to talk about the amount of sex and sexual assault depicted in graphic detail within YA books. This just keeps happening. Also, there's all of the above plus a graphic, too-detailed rape scene in this "kids' book" so, uh. Someone please actually read the contents of these books before putting it out before children. Kids reading these and getting scarred is a regular staple and maybe that should be fixed.

Crows are exceptionally stupid, foolish birds. Yes, the one entire chunk of birds known to be capable of tool usage, learning exchange and bartering, and so on. In this book, they are stupid and unintelligent beings. They are low on the totem pole, treated awfully, and all in the family of corvid(save magpies) are basically hated and looked down upon. How???

Owls being wise is a small and poor hill to die on, they are exceptionally brilliant at what they do, but they are utterly stupid in anything they do not know. In One for Sorrow, they're extremely wise, blah de blah.

Robins are often a violent species of bird, with 10% of their deaths being by their own claws and territory fights going too far. But in One for Sorrow, robins are peaceful hippy-typed birds who want peace and never do violence, even if angered.

Eagles are elegant and majestic and barely useful. They're almost extinct and never ever poach or eat carrion. The book even makes a point to say they're too noble to eat robins, but they do! In real life, they love to grab songbirds and eat them. Songbirds are prey, all animals are prey to an eagle, even a deer! But one rabbit helps them so they vow to never eat rabbits again. This tied in with something else down below will elaborate on how stupid that decision is.

Seagulls are... pirate-themed and not featured? This is a terrible loss, I would have likely actually given this a real two stars if we had seagulls taking everyone hostage for their seeds and bugs and wielding some type of weapon. Or even using their beaks like swords! An utter waste!

Magpies are Nazis. Yes. Those Nazis. They are exceptionally cliche, unremarkable, and cartoonishly written but they are still Nazis. In fact our main character is detailed to have killed all his siblings hours after hatching, then being abandoned by his parents. So he fed off their dead bodies, and then grew into adulthood. Somehow, he knew who his parents were, and as adults, hunted them down. Then brutally torturing his parents in the darkest ways possible. Yes, our main villain Nazi was born evil. Shadow the Hedgehog at his worst written moments is not this level of edgy. Most of even the edgiest WC content is nothing, this magpie is beyond intense darkness and straight through to edgy.

And I have read some edgy content. Edgy isn't always bad. But here? It's literally "the suffering of others is fun!" It's absolutely bad.

As an outsider looking in, my reflex was to expect the large birds such as the owls and the eagles to kill the Nazi dictator magpie, but they cannot for some...some reason. Apparently even though magpies are eaten by both owls and eagles, there is no bird-on-bird violence done by anyone but the magpie species. Likewise, birds don't eat birds. Also, magpies now outnumber all other birds for some...some reason. I don't know. Plot contrivance? Because for some reason magpies needed to out populate all other birds, even crows.

Then they made a deal with insects to say they will never ever eat insects again if they contaminate carcasses. That's all of the insects made peace with via Tomar the owl. What are the birds eating now then? Why is this their doomsday solution?

The graphic rape scene early on is because our main villain basically tantrums and violates a fellow magpie for no reason. Poor Katja. She'll be back near the end. But this somehow gives him a conscious and he's in love with her when she returns, and ... what? She vows to kill him in revenge, and even though he has forgotten her, she raises her kid to kill him. Katja is killed before him, with him feeling "horror" for some reason. Her son seeks revenge. Both Katja and her son, Venga are then killed. Basically their whole revenge plan ends with them dead and nothing accomplished.
And then the main villain is shot in even more graphic detail than necessary. Because he's mistaken for his dead son who pecked a kid(extreme reaction to a bird, but okay).

Oh, I want to add the final nail in this book's coffin for me. It's a cherry-on-top type of thing:
The author wrote themselves into such a corner that they could only use an apocalypse as a possible ending for it. Yes, this book goes so inanely into the pits of hell that it requires an apocalypse as a possible solution. I saw a comment on Youtube that perfectly summarized how bad this went, "Because of a decision made in the last book, the world goes to shit and is running straight into the apocalypse, but then humans decide to nuke everything, but the rapture comes before that can happen".

1.5 stars, Woodall literally lost the plot.… (meer)