Oh my gosh, I had the weirdest deja vu throughout this book - have I seen a TV movie or series that follows a similar story? or just dreamed it?

This is a remarkable read. These eco warriors certainly give their lives to a cause. It make me never want to eat fish again!

It was a little hard to follow as an audiobook, how it jumped between timeframes. I enjoyed the conflict within Jake/Robert, the eco warrior and the law and order warrior ... as an undercover FBI agent who has infiltrated this lawless operation.

It's read by the author, John Yunker, and rarely have I heard an author read his own book to such great effect. I looked up what else he has read, and I don't think he's even read others of his own books. But he should definitely take on full time narration.

The book was beautifully written, so I've put John Yunker's other books on my To Read list. Yunker seems to be a science writer specialising in animal rights and welfare. The Tourist Trail grew out of his own experience in these areas. I'm going to repeat what he has said about writing this book:
I wrote The Tourist Trail after volunteering with a penguin census project in the Patagonia region of Argentina. I have also traveled to Norway and Antarctica, where portions of The Tourist Trail are set. This novel is based on the award-winning short story, selected by Peter Orner and published in Phoebe. The novel is not only inspired by penguin researchers but by the efforts of the Sea Shepherd Society.

I feel guilty about giving this book only 3.5 stars, which is more about me than the book, so I'm giving it 4 stars with the extra 1/2 star justified because this is a book you will NOT forget. ( )

I might have avoided this book, had I understood the sort of eco-fiction it held, the beauty it would be mixing with heartbreak and terror, or the way it would bring me to tears over and over again. At the same time, I might have run toward it in a full-on sprint if I'd known how dangerous and beautiful and dark it would be.

Because the truth is that this book, for some people, will be inspiring enough that you might fear handing it to your children, just for fear of what good passion it might inspire. If I'd come across this book as a teenager, it might have offered a whole host of passion-inspired and well-meaning, environmentally driven damage to me turning into a semi-respectable creative. I'm both glad it didn't, and also wishing it also had. This book is one that actively works against apathy, and in fact pushes for a deeper and more careful understanding of commitment to activism.

The story is about passion, ecology, and men and women who embrace causes higher than themselves. It's heart-breaking, hard to swallow, dangerous, wonderful, and beautifully written.

Absolutely recommended, with the caveat that this exquisite book is often difficult to read, and impossible to look away from. ( )

I've been to Antarctica and was one of those penguin tourists so maligned in the book, so the penguin research sections were quite interesting. But I found the plot more compelling than the characters: each pair seemed to fall desperately in love within instants of meeting, with no build-up or character development. So, then, their various drives to find the beloved again were just not believable to me. Cardboard characters, I guess I'd say.

But I did enjoy the plot, and the scenes of protest ships confronting the whalers. ( )

The Tourist Trail is the story of people driven by a mission. Angela Haynes studies penguins, hard, tedious, and isolated work that breaks her heart because she is documenting their decimation. Robert is an FBI agent who has a dedication to justice that is brought into question by his empathy for the cause of those he has been hunting. Aeneas is a leader of the Cetacean Defense Alliance, a fictional and inexact analog of the Sea Shepherd Society, using direct action to stop illegal whaling or the fraud of whaling through phony research vessels. Ethan is a computer programmer in love with Annie, an environmentalist. His mission is to get Annie to love him as he loves her.

They all come together in the Antarctic Ocean where they discover that people with a mission often have to pay a deep personal price for their beliefs. That is if they want to do right, not just be right.

If I have a reading obsession, it is the Antarctic. I have read travel memoirs, histories, and just about everything, even the fictional diary of a cat and oh, hell, did it make me cry and cry and cry. I have never thought of tuna the same way again. I am also someone who criticizes the purists who make the perfect the enemy of the good and who prefer losing to imperfect victories. I think of Rebecca West who wrote:

Often I wonder whether I would be able to suffer for my principles if the need came, and it strikes me as a matter of the highest importance. That should not be so. I should ask myself with far greater urgency whether I have done everything possible to carry those principles into effect, and how I can attain power to make them absolutely victorious. But those questions I put only with my mind. They do not excite my guts, which wait anxiously while I ponder my gift for martyrdom.

The people in this book act to carry their principles into effect and yes, they suffer personal losses. They are, in their minds, doing right even when in some ways they are not being right. There are important ethical questions asked in John Yunker’s The Tourist Trail and the answers are not obvious and not easy.

While Robert is conflicted, dismayed and disgusted by the murder of the whales, he does not question the accuracy of the eco-terrorist label for organizations whose tactics are economic sabotage and harassment, not murder. I would have liked him to think about that question. Aeneas seems single-minded and he would be more interesting if he expressed the cost of his dedication. Ethan is a tragic figure, though probably more tragic for male readers than for women who might think he’s a stalker. Angela, for me, is the most intriguing. Her heart is broken by penguins and and by people, but she never loses her strength of purpose.

I received a copy of The Tourist Trail from the publisher through a LibraryThing drawing. This is the second edition recently released in advance of coming sequel called Where Oceans Hide Their Dead which comes out next year. I didn’t read the preview because then I would be impatient for the sequel and then find the sequel less engaging because I read the first few chapters already. I am terrible that way.

The Tourist Trail at Ashland Creek Press
John Yunker author site

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2018/09/22/9780979647529/ ( )

What an interesting approach to a novel! The author, John Yunker weaves a tale of intrigue into a setting of environmental expanse in Antarctica and I totally enjoyed it! The characters are fascinating, the descriptions of the natural surroundings grip the reader and I loved learning so much about that area of the world. Amazingly, the author balances the excitement of the plot with the importance of the message. He also includes a romance between two loners who are nature lovers. This makes the reader more aware of the isolation experienced in the Antarctic.

Rarely is an author able to write a book like this that does not have a didactic tone. Kudos to Yunker who reveals the beauty of the landscape, the animal society present, particularly the penguins and skillfully includes the challenges faced by humans who have entered the premises under the guise of scientific enterprise. This is a good read, especially for those who love nature. ( )