The Great Bear (The Misewa Saga #2) by David Alexander Robertson for Timeslip Tuesday

The Great Bear (The Misewa Saga #2) by David Alexander Robertson, this week's Timeslip Tuesday book, is a sequel to The Barren Grounds. This first book was a magnificent portal fantasy, in which two Native kids, Morgan and Eli, open a way through to the land of Misewa, and help save it, and the animal persons who call it home, from a never ending winter.  Though it's been over year since I read it, I vividly remember the cold and the hunger of the kids' journey across the barren lands, and how the animal persons they met there taught them traditional ways to be in the world.

Morgan and Eli have been continuing to visit Misewa every night, travelling through portal pictures Eli draws, and with each night in our world equaling two months there, it now feels like home. It's a place where Morgan is learning Cree ways of being in the world that she never had a chance too in "real" life, having been taken from her mother when she was two. It's a place where Eli reconnects to his own traditional childhood, and a place where being Cree is not something that gets him bullied as it does during the days at school. But their dearest friend in Misewa, the fisher animal person, Ochek, died during their first adventure, and has a left a huge hole in their hearts.

When their foster mom gives Morgan her mother's phone number, her emotions almost overwhelm her; she can't bring herself to call. Realizing how badly Eli is being bullied adds to her distress. And so when Eli draws a portal picture of a Misewa where Ochek is still a kid himself, and offers the chance to travel back to that time when he is still alive, Morgan can't resist.

It is strange and bittersweet to meet someone you know who doesn't know you yet, but gradually Morgan and Eli sink into the routines of the community and find peace. But the piece is shattered when the Great Bear moves down from the north. The bear attacks villages, taking all he wants with savage violence and destruction. And out on Ochek's family's trap line, they meet the bear face to face and recognize him as some one they love in the present time. No one has ever stood against him before, but the two kids and their adopted community find the strength to so to save their village and stop living with fear.

The first book was a journey and quest story; this one is more an emotional one (though not without tension and action). As such, it was moving and immersive and memorable. It ends with one heck of a cliffhanger, which I guess I'm cool with because I wanted more story, not just about Misewa but about Morgan in real life--the fantasy cliffhanger, frankly, interests me less than the prospect of Morgan meeting her birth family....


It works as a time travel book too--the kids openly discuss the ramifications of being in the past of their portal country, though they didn't expect what one of those ramifications would be. (Neither did I, though if I'd been trying to be clever, instead of just enjoying the book, I might have....)


This is this first time travel within a portal fantasy world that I've reviewed, and the only other similar situation I can think of is Prince Caspian, so perhaps I'll review that as time travel some Tuesday. This series gets compared a lot to Narnia, so it's interesting that both second books are time travel-ly (though one is to the past and one to the future). And it does seem that the third Msewa book will be a journey, perhaps echoing Voyage of the Dawn Treader....