Review of "Animal Conquest" by David Bush

Score: 92/100 (9.2 out of 10)

No one is doing what David Bush is doing!

Bush brings history to life in a way that is digestible and interesting for older children, teens, and even adults--doing so in the fun form of allegorical talking animals!

Over the years, we've become acquainted with Bush's work. It's very ambitious! And you can tell that Bush cares about history. It is certainly a passion of his. What often gets lost in the mix is, well... the fact that a lot of that history gets jumbled up in storytelling and vice-versa. Often times, it seems like Bush becomes so fixated on presenting every aspect of a time in history, that the story and characters become muddled, convoluted, swept up, and sometimes outright lost in the mix. It also tends to feel obligatory, like the history is presented just for the sake of completion rather than for entertainment or enjoyment.

General Jack and the Battle of the Five Kingdoms, the book that kicked off this historical fiction series, was an ambitious near-masterpiece. It was clearly Bush's magnum opus—significantly longer and more epic than the later books in the series. It seemed like a book that took over a decade to write. It is one of the best books to come through our OCA contests.

Later books in the series tended to feel a little more rushed and not nearly as epic. We did, however, appreciate and enjoy bits and pieces of all of them. Many times, we found ourselves more enthralled and fascinated by the history lesson/lecture at the end rather than the stories and characters themselves. We especially felt that way about Animal Quest (about the Black Death in the mid 1300s), Animals Divided (about the Great Western Schism of the 14th century), and Animal Attrition (about the 9th century Vikings). It's sorta a range with this series: a range between enjoying the characters/story and enjoying the history lesson/lecture. With Animal Quest, it was pretty close. The characters were almost as compelling as those in General Jack.

And the series almost regained full-steam in Animal Revenge (about the fall of the Western Roman Empire) if for no other reason than Flavia being one of the greatest characters to ever come through our contests.

So, where does Animal Conquest land in our range of enjoyment? Well, it definitely has its bright spots!

Animal Conquest centers around one of the darkest and most disturbing periods in human history: the Crusades. But it doesn't present the Crusades as solely Christians going up against Muslims. Instead, it shows how complex and nuances these events were, as well as the people involved in them. We get to see a lot of different factions, groups, and peoples represented in this book.

Bush introduces a whole bestiary of cultures as animal clans: camels and hyenas and jackals for different Islamic factions, mountain goats and ibex for the Nestorian Christians, and snow leopards as the terrifying Mongols. Hey, Kublai Khan—probably the most powerful and influential man alive at the time—actually sneaks in as a character!

There are pros and cons to this. On one hand, it makes the book a lot more dynamic and multi-faceted. On the other hand, it also runs the risk of stretching everything thin and overcomplicating things (which is an issue and has been an issue with many of Bush's books).

It depends on what kind of reader you are and what kind of stories you like. If you like more melodramatic and straightforward tales of good versus evil, then this might be a little much for you.

If you like complex plots with a lot of different sides, civilizations, kingdoms, and peoples clashing (and often infighting), this might be for you.

In a sense, its a light return to the epicness of General Jack-- almost like a General Jack: Light.


WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD
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The story opens in 1210 with Jean, an honorable but proud terrier in Heartlandia, who gets caught in a brutal inheritance feud after his father dies. In a rooftop confrontation, his hot-headed brother Fulk dies, and Jean is blamed. Rather than execute him, the court condemns him to a harsh penitential pilgrimage into the Dark Land, which functions as this world’s Holy Land analogue. He must leave behind both his inheritance and his beloved fiancée, Margot.

While Jean is away, his cousin Guy quietly consolidates power over the estate and over Margot’s future. We later learn that Guy never meant to murder Jean outright and even likes him, but he absolutely wanted the land, the status, and Margot, and he was more than willing to scheme, manipulate, and stage “rescues” to get them.

Jean sets out on a voyage with other pilgrims and companions, including the proud Byzantine princess Pandora, a white Persian cat, and her daughter Comnena. Pandora has her own agenda, tied to returning to her glittering eastern home, the City of Gold.

At sea, everything goes wrong. Their ship is attacked and wrecked, and Margot is swept overboard in the chaos. She struggles toward a patch of light through a hole in the hull, clings to debris as the world falls apart around her, and then everything goes black. Later, Guy will report that her ship was taken by pirates and sunk by a Heartlandian warship, and that her body was found and identified by Jean’s bridal collar. That supposed “corpse” becomes one of the book’s big emotional linchpins.


The survivors wash up in the Dark Land and begin a long, punishing trek across desert and hostile territory toward holy sites and eventually the fabled City of Gold.

As the journey unfolds, Bush recasts entire civilizations as animal peoples: camels, hyenas, and jackals stand in for various Islamic groups, sure-footed goats and ibex for the Nestorian Christians, and sleek snow leopards for the fearsome Mongols. Step by step, the pilgrims’ ranks are thinned by starvation, ambushes, and internal squabbles until the shining ideal of crusade looks far less noble and far more ruinous.

The weary pilgrims finally reach the City of Gold, Pandora’s home, a place of dazzling surface splendor and deep political rot. Comnena is groomed as a potential bride for the emperor’s nephew, Antonius, who expects a veiled, silent, perfectly obedient wife and casually talks about his future illegitimate children as if they are disposable accessories. Comnena, who grew up wild and free, pushes back gently but clearly, and those conversations quietly show how suffocating this “golden cage” really is.

Pandora, obsessed with securing a future for herself and her daughter, bargains and schemes. Meanwhile, Jean’s group sees the corruption under the gold and tries to leave with Comnena. It does not go as planned. Comnena is effectively taken as the emperor’s property, and Pandora’s choices trap her in a nightmare court. In one of the darker turns of the book, Pandora herself is killed by Clodio, the vulture she has tried to turn into a tame grass-eater. He reclaims his predatory nature and tears her throat out, a very literal image of how her manipulations and contempt for others come back on her.

Jean and his surviving companions, including the fiddler Dagobert and big, loyal Preston, fall in with a ragged beggar named Temur, who keeps calling Jean “Prester John” by mistake. They eventually discover that Temur is actually the Kublai Khan in disguise, scouting for a worthy successor. He leads them to a hidden mountain kingdom of ibex and other mountain beasts, flourishing in peace and prosperity, protected by cliffs and secrecy. In a moving scene, Temur publicly reveals himself and names “Prester John” as his heir, praising his mix of humility, justice, and resourcefulness, and the entire city bows to Jean and Preston.

Jean is then offered the chance to return to Heartlandia. Through his old friend Sigibert he hears that Guy is thriving as lord of the estate and longs to share the burden with him. More painfully, he is told that Margot died years ago, her body identified by the collar he gave her. Jean decides that the inheritance has been a curse, “the root cause of all [his] troubles,” and renounces it outright. He sends some companions home to be cared for on Guy’s lands and chooses a new identity and new life in the hidden kingdom instead.

Almost a year later, as ruler of this “celestial kingdom,” Jean is dragged to a newly authorised slave market in the square, furious that slavery has been allowed. He decides to buy the captives and free them, and in the middle of the group he spots one dog who is “priceless” to him. Taken to the palace, the downcast slave dog finally looks up when he speaks to her. It is Margot, very much alive, and the two are reunited after six years apart, ready to tell each other everything and begin again in their unlikely new home.

The fiction ends, and then the book shifts into an extensive Afterword and a long “Historical Background” section (what we've been calling the "Lesson/Lecture" that's become the staple of every Bush book). Bush explains how Jean and his friends stand in for the crusading West, Pandora for Byzantium, various desert predators for different Islamic currents, the mountain ibex for the Nestorian Christians, and snow leopards for the Mongols. He connects the Prester John legend to real medieval hopes for rescue from the East and traces how that myth helped drive exploration and empire.

As we've often found, the "Historical Background" sections of these books tend to be even more interesting than the fictional stories themselves!

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SPOILERS END

There's a lot going on in this book. Tons of characters. Tons of chaos, action, and adventure. You're either going to find it overwhelming or be swept up in it!

Check it out on Amazon!