Friday, April 21, 2017

Wambu: The Chieftain's Son

by Piet Prins
182 pages / 1981

This is a book about cannibals – what more could any boy reader want?

Wambu is a young boy living in the deep jungles of New Guinea before the arrival of the white man. His tribe is a small one and hasn’t been able to eat any people for quite some time now so when Wambu and his father come across a strange girl wandering through their part of the forest their first inclination is to eat her. Fortunately they have second thoughts and instead adopt Sirja, the girl, into their family. The main thrust of the story starts here, since Sirja is a new Christian convert. Her Christianity is sharply contrasted with the village’s paganism.

Though Wambu likes listening to Sirja’s stories of Moses and Abraham and Jesus, he also likes going hunting with his father and learning about all the evil spirits in the forest. Sirja tell him that the white missionaries are wonderful, but the village’s witchdoctor insists that white men are evil spirits who have taken on flesh. Who is Wambu to believe?

When Wambu’s village is attacked by a rival headhunting tribe he escapes and goes for help…to the white man!

This is a fast paced book, with loads of interesting information about what it’s like to live in the jungle. Did you know that some people find caterpillars delicious? Or that they eat the insides of trees? Fascinating tidbits like this are thrown in throughout the book and make the story all the more compelling as we, the readers, are taken into the depths of a very foreign world.

The Chieftain’s Son’s only fault is that it doesn’t have a proper conclusion. It is the first of three books in the Wambu series and the story is incomplete without the other two books so when you buy the first you simply have to buy Wambu: In the Valley of Death, and Wambu: Journey to Manhood as well. (You’ll want to order them all at the same time, because once you start reading you won’t want to have to wait for the other books to arrive.) While I am going to try these with my girls in a few years, I would say they are most definitely "boy books." I'd suggest them for over ten, but add these are the type of books fathers would enjoy reading to their children – there is even enough action in them for Dad!

They are available from Inheritance Publications.

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