Spirit Walker (novel)

The story takes place in Northern Europe, in an area inhabited by clans of humans named after different animals. These clans live a hunter-gatherer existence with a shamanic belief system.

Six months after the events of Wolf Brother, Torak, the young male protagonist, is now living with the Raven Clan. One of the clan members, Oslak, becomes sick and attempts to kill himself and his young nephew, but is stopped by the clan's leader. He is tied up and quarantined. Torak suspects that the sickness has been created by a group of evil mages known as the Soul-Eaters.

Leaders from other Clans come to the Raven camp and tell them the sickness has been spreading through the forest. Torak realises that a small creature has been stalking him and trying to kill him, and when Oslak escapes and kills himself, Torak discovers that the creature was responsible. Torak sneaks out of the camp and goes into the forest seeking a cure. The cure, he discovers, can only be obtained by going towards the ocean to the west.

Wolf, Torak's companion from the previous novel, has been living with a pack in the High Mountains, but becomes unhappy with his life and he goes off to find Torak.

Renn, the female protagonist, has encountered the creature at the Raven Camp and the clan's mage, Sauenn, explains that a it is a Tokoroth: a child who has been stolen from their mother and for about nine months confined to darkness, fed barely anything to forget everything, even the touch of their mother. The Soul-Eater then traps a demon inside the child. The demon's souls then take control and the Soul-Eater uses the tokoroth to do their bidding. Renn sneaks out of the camp to find Torak and she and Wolf encounter each other. They then both go looking for him. At the seashore, Torak encounters and fights three boys from the Seal Clan: Bale, Detlan and Asrif, but is eventually overpowered. They believe that, by washing his hunting gear in the sea, he has dishonoured the Sea Mother and must be punished, so they take him by canoe to their home in the Seal Islands.

Renn and Wolf meet some members of the Sea Eagle Clan, who take them both to the Seal Islands to help Torak.

The Seal Clan's mage, Tenris, initially wants to punish Torak until Torak informs him of the sickness. Tenris tells Torak that a cure can be made from a rare plant which grows at the top of a particular cliff: the plant must be gathered on midsummer night, which is only four days away. Torak quickly realises the Tokoroth has followed him to the island. He goes looking for it but is tricked into falling into a seal net, from which he is rescued by Wolf and Ren. They talk and establish that an orca has been killed, breaking a taboo. Only the teeth have been removed from the carcass. Renn informs Torak that she saw one of the Seal Clan near the orca's carcass, but she is unable to persuade Torak that any of the clan would break such a taboo.

Torak goes with Bale, Detlan and Asrif to climb the cliff and gather the plant. Asrif climbs up but his climbing harness becomes snagged, and Torak follows him up. He has to unhook himself from his rope to rescue Deltan and to gather the plant. Unable to reach his harness, he realises that the only way back down is to dive into the sea. Under the water, he feels himself taking the form of a seal for a few moments and senses an angry orca approaching, before returning to his own body. The boys rush into the water to save Torak as an orca attacks Detlan, causing him a crippling injury. When they return to the island, Torak talks with Tenris about the odd experience he had in the water. Tenris explains that Torak must be a Spirit Walker: a human with the rare ability to drift out of his own body and into the body of any other living creature, and become the creature until the souls return to the human's body.

Renn is found by some of the Seal Clan and realises that Tenris was responsible for killing the orca, and that he is the Soul-Eater. Tenris notices a scab on her hand and lies to Bale that she's sick which gives him an excuse to get Bale to lock her up, preventing Renn from warning Torak that Tenris is a Soul-Eater.

Torak goes to the crag to make the cure with Tenris, but Tenris overpowers Torak with the help of two Tokoroths. Tenris reveals to Torak that he is a Soul-Eater, and that he killed the orca. He reveals that he had created the demon bear which killed Torak's father and realising that the bear's killer must be someone with power, had sent the Tokoroth to poison the juniper berries of the forest, knowing that the sickness will flush the person with power (Torak) out as he searches for a cure. Tenris intends to eat Torak's heart, to assimilate his powers and become the greatest Soul-Eater. Tenris then reveals that Torak's father was his own brother.

Wolf appears and chases away the Tokoroth. Renn, who has persuaded Bale that Tenris is a Soul-Eater, shoots Tenris on the hand with an arrow, giving Torak the opportunity to escape by diving off the crag. Tenris jumps after him, but the blood from his arrow-wound attracts an orca which has been seeking revenge for the killing of the young orca. Before Tenris is killed by the orca, he tells Torak that Fin-Kedinn knows more about Torak's father. Torak swims to safety, and he, Renn, and Wolf return to the forest as the Seals warn everyone Off the juniper berries.

Fin-Kedinn tells Torak that he met Torak's father and Tenris when he was eleven. He became friends with them, and said that the brothers lived for magecraft. A few years later, Torak's father was named the Wolf mage, but Tenris wasn't named Seal mage. Tenris disappeared with bitterness, but years later he reappeared, joining the Soul-Eaters, who were originally not evil and called the Healers. Then when the great fire broke out, Tenris was badly burnt and the fire scorched lungs and his left hand was burnt so badly that it was ‘shaped like a claw’. Fin-Kedinn tells Torak that he can either use his spirit walking ability to make the Soul-Eaters more powerful than they ever dreamed of and tyrannise the forest, or Torak could destroy them completely. A while later, when Torak is playing around with Wolf, he vows that he will try his best and use his powers to vanquish the Soul-Eaters.

Many critics felt Spirit Walker was superior to the previous book in the series, Wolf Brother. An early review from Kirkus Reviews said "Paver incorporates vivid descriptions of her characters' woodcraft and other skills, as well as credible views of their oneness with the natural world and animistic beliefs – details that enrich her complex tale without impeding its quick pace."[2] Some critics expressed concern that the book might scare younger readers.[3]

Spirit Walker has been published in a variety of different languages, including Dutch, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Korean, Japanese, Polish, and Swedish.