Explorers on Witch Mountain (The Polar Bear Explorers' Club, #2)

by Alex Bell

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

The Forbidden Expedition is a worthy sequel to the first Polar Bear Explorers Club book, featuring favorite characters, quirky adventures with a hint of danger, and entertaining plot twists. If you’re looking for a good middle grade fantasy series with fun quests and lots of imagination, these might be the books for you.

I enjoyed the first installment immensely (Krysta did not, and you can read her review here), and my assessment of The Forbidden Expedition is nearly the same. The premises are actually somewhat similar, in that protagonist Stella and company go on a journey in icy unexplored territory that many people think they should not go on because it’s too dangerous. This book, however, introduces witches, which were not prominent in book one.

Spoilers for Book One in This Paragraph: The theme of discrimination is also still present, though the focus has shifted. In book one, Stella faces pushback for being a girl who wants to join the Polar Bear Explorers Club—which is simply not allowed. In this book, she is somewhat begrudgingly accepted, and most of the explorers’ clubs are now allowing female members, but she begins facing bigotry because it has been revealed she is actually a snow princess—and all snow princesses are supposed to be evil and grow into cruel ice queens. Facing discrimination does help Stella confront some of her own biases, and of course this is an important theme, but part of me also hope that every single book in the series won’t be about some newly revealed reason that other characters unfairly hate Stella.

Overall, however, this is a fun, imaginative adventure. I love seeing more of the world Alex Bel has created, though part of me also hopes that other parts of it will be explored in future. (I get it. The character explore the Icelands because the series is the “Polar Bear Explorers Club,” but there are such tantalizing hints about the other clubs and climates that I want to know more. Spin-off series, anyone?) There are clichés in the books, and they aren’t perfect, but I am definitely going to keep reading.