The Wild Robot Protects - The Finale

 

(note: I tried copying and pasting the blog I wrote from a Google Doc but that was being weird so I tried it with a Word doc which worked better, but there are some marked errors that are shown for some reason. I really hope this doesn't obstruct too much! Anyway, enjoy.)

Spoilers for both of the second and third entries in The Wild Robot trilogy: The Wild Robot Escapes and The Wild Robot Protects. Since this review is on the third and final book of the series, I’d assume you read the two blogs I wrote for the previous two Wild Robot books, but if you haven’t I would recommend you briefly do so before reading this finale blog. Thank you! 

 

My name is Philip Chen, and today on the Frog Blog we’re looking at the threequel and final entry to the critically acclaimed novel series The Wild Robot, the series of which three of my previous separate blog posts were focused on. Again, like what I did for the sequel, The Wild Robot Escapes, I’m gonna skip the “first look” part for the finale. Like I did for the review for the second book, I’ll be summarizing the previous installment (the second book in this case) and then get into the book review for The Wild Robot Protects. 

 

The second book centers around the titular wild robot Roz, who, after being captured by the company who made her and forced to leave her family and friends on the island she lived on, is returned to human civilization. She’s now ordered to work in a farm owned by the Shareef family, tending the crops and farm animals and watching over Mr. Shareef’s son and daughter Jad and Jaya. Even though she is very good at doing work around the farm, Roz still yearns for the life she had on the island with her animal friends and most importantly her son Brightbill, the gosling she had raised, and tries to come up with plans to escape. Roz stays with the Shareefs for months and flocks of geese fly by from time to time, and eventually a grown Brightbill and his flock visits the farm. He and Roz are both overjoyed to finally be reunited, but Roz can’t leave the farm because she has a tracker hidden in her robot body. After living with the Shareefs for a while, Roz has become very close with Jad and Jaya. She eventually decides to tell the children her plan on removing the tracker from her body so she can run away with Brightbill back to her island. They succeed, and Brightbill arrives to lead Roz back to the island. On the way, they encounter many different obstacles, such as rough environments and wolf attacks. 

 

Unfortunately, Roz and Brightbill eventually reach a whole city filled with technology and people. The Wild Robot book series is set in the future (obviously because we have Roz, a talking robot) so civilization is much more advanced than modern times, with airships flying around and shiny robots doing physical jobs that humans would do today. However, when Roz goes inside a bullet train to enter the city, it shuts and starts off before Brightbill can follow her. So in the city, Roz must try to find her son again and must blend in with her surroundings the best she can, because Mr. Shareef has contacted Roz’s company that she ran away. This means that Roz mustn't get recognized as the Wild Robot, else she would be destroyed. With the help of a group of pigeons Roz is reunited with her son once again, but unfortunately a trio of RECO robots (the same kind of robots that arrived at Roz’s island in the first book to apprehend her) are dropped in the city to chase after Roz. Brightbill must help Roz move all over the city to escape the robots, but she is eventually cornered and forced to climb up the side of a building to escape. As she is running from the RECOs on top of buildings, she throws Brightbill up into the air so he can be safe, but in turn is blasted by a RECO and topples off a building. 

 

Roz eventually awakens in a dark mysterious place, but she is only a head that cannot move. An old woman by the name of Dr. Molovo walks in and tells Roz that she is in the robot factory; Dr. Molovo was the one who designed all of the robots, and she wants to know Roz’s whole story of her life on the island, and Roz has many questions for her too on how she was made etc. Dr. Molovo eventually has to terminate Roz due to all the fear she has unintentionally inflicted on the residents of the city. However, she only destroys Roz’s body: she allows Roz’s old mind, with all the memories of the animals of her island, to stay; and even transfers it into a new, bigger and better robot body. Brightbill also arrives, and Dr. Molovo flies Roz and Brightbill directly to their home island with an airship. They are dropped back off and meet all of their animal friends again, and they all lived happily ever after. 

 

Or did they? 

Sure seems like it. Roz is back at her island home living happily with her animal friends, and Brightbill even has a new mate named Glimmer. Everything is perfect…. Until the island is faced with a new environmental threat known as the "Poison Tide." The Poison Tide is a toxic substance contaminating the ocean and endangering all kinds of animals and the island's ecosystem. 

Determined to protect her community, Roz leads the island's animals to move their sea friends to an inland pond to try to lessen the damage. This relocation leads to other challenges, though, like overcrowding and less resources. It looks like there is no way to fight the Poison Tide on the island, so Roz decides to handle it herself by seeing where it comes from and stopping it. 

In her quest to kill the Poison Tide, Roz discovers that the new body Dr. Molovo gave her is waterproof, letting her adventure deep into the ocean depths. So she must leave her home island once again - to embark on a perilous journey north to find a legendary shark believed to have the power to stop the Poison Tide! Will she discover the Poison Tide and put an end to the havoc it’s unleashing? 

The first book had more emotional heartfelt moments, and the second book had more action and adventures. But I think that the final book brings this all together: Roz’s whole island is in danger of getting wiped out - all of the animals and foliage she grew so close to. As she adventures through the vast ocean, she meets a huge variety of new sea creatures that she's never come in contact with before, each helping her in a different way to stop the Poison Tide. All of Roz’s past experiences have led her to the most dangerous threat of all. Will she stop the Poison Tide and save thousands of different animals and plants from dying? Find out in the thrilling finale of The Wild Robot series. 

Thank you for reading! 

• Philip Chen