Home > Categories > Books > Young Adult > Tom Hassler and The Whale Killers review
Tom Hassler is no ordinary boy. He can fly, for a start, and talk to sea creatures. But can he stop the slaughter of innocent whales and their calves in the Great Southern Ocean? Is he brave enough to stand in front of their harpoons, if that's what it takes?
In the Antarctic, a group of dastardly whale hunters are on the prowl. Tom's amazing grandmother reviews the terrible scenes from the monitoring lab at Castle Hassler. Desperately, she calls the sea creatures together to defend the helpless whales - but will they be in time? And what will Tom be asked to do now, to justify his fancy new title as the Hope of the Sea People?
So many questions and so little time to find the answers... and does anyone know what a Xakarax is and where you can find one?
Product reviews...
I was in two minds about reading this book. I absolutely hate hearing/reading about animal cruelty in any way or form but I was very curious how it was going to end, so my curiosity won out in the end. Unfortunately unless a Xakarax turns up the whales are unfortunately still going to be in trouble. It is absolutely disgusting how a few nations claim that they are killing these majestic animals for scientific research. The poor whales get chased down by these giant ships and eventually while surfacing for air they are cruelly harpooned in their side, usually by the fin, and die an agonizing slow death.
This book thankfully did not dwell on the death too much. It did comment on various occasions about how tired and worn out the whales were as they tried to flee from the whale chasers. I was a little confused to begin with as Tom and his grandmother can talk to animals and they can fly. I wasn't sure for a while if they were human or not but turns out this is book three so the subject of flying must be raised in earlier books. It does also refer to the past a bit and while I felt like I was missing something it didn't hamper the book to much.
A majority of the book is about the preparation of fighting and the journey to the Southern Seas. It does have a contents page which was rather neat as been a long time since read a book with one of those. The chapters were nice and short and it was an easy read. It does give a warning that this book is not for scaredy kids. The only real horror is the torture of the whales. It is upsetting to know this is still happening today in our oceans and hopefully (soon) countries will unite together and stop the needless slaughter.
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Joan Didion (1934 - ), 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem'