The Power of the Unnoticed: Barbara Hynak Finds Strength in Soft Voices
By: Janice O’Brien
In a world filled with lions, warriors, leaders, and ancient prophecies, it would be easy to assume that power belongs to those who can command attention.
Barbara Hynak’s Roars Across the World asks readers to look again.
Some of the novel’s most important inhabitants are among its smallest. They do not rule territories, lead armies or possess the physical strength of the lions and humans around them. Some can barely make themselves heard. Yet through these overlooked creatures, Hynak explores one of the central ideas running through her fantasy novel: importance is not determined by size, visibility or conventional power.
“The wrigglies represent all the creatures that are not cute, useful, or considered worth saving,” Hynak said. “They never fight on the battlefield. They can’t be heard over a lion’s roar.”
Yet the wrigglies refuse to disappear.
Small enough to be tossed aside, they return. Individually they may appear insignificant, but collectively they become impossible to ignore. Hynak uses them to challenge the assumption that the largest or most powerful members of a community are necessarily its most essential.
“Small does not mean weak and unnoticed does not mean unnecessary,” she said.
That idea extends far beyond the wrigglies.
Roars Across the World takes place in a world where humans, lions, and other creatures are struggling with drought, hunger, territorial conflict, and the consequences of decisions made in the name of survival. At its center are Atum-Sani, a human leader, and Tradent, a lion leader. Each carries responsibility for those who depend upon him, and each initially understands power largely through the history and beliefs of his own kind.
But Hynak surrounds these obvious leaders with characters whose strengths are less easily recognized.
Karenna, a character Hynak says was not originally planned, became one of the clearest examples. He is afraid, and rather than eliminating that fear to make him conventionally heroic, Hynak allows it to become part of his courage.
“He is not fearless; in fact, his fear is his strength,” Hynak said. “His courage is in looking beyond fighting to find another solution.”
Lamasu, a lion who initially brought humor to the story, developed into another kind of counterweight to traditional ideas about strength. His willingness to question Tradent becomes increasingly important, particularly because he remains loyal while doing so.
Through Lamasu, Hynak suggests that loyalty does not require silence.
These characters are part of a larger pattern in Roars Across the World. Again and again, the novel questions what power looks like and who possesses it. Physical strength matters in this world. Lions must kill to eat. Humans may kill to protect themselves. Hunger and drought have real consequences, and Hynak deliberately avoids creating a natural world stripped of its harsher realities.
But physical power is only one form of power.
“Strength is not measured only by size, speed, teeth, or power,” Hynak said. “It is measured by our differences, and our ability to hold our one small place in the web so that the strand does not break.”
That web is central to Hynak’s vision of the natural world. Rivers, rain, grass, predators, prey, humans, and creatures small enough to escape notice all exist within relationships. Remove or damage one strand and the effects travel outward.
It is also why the wrigglies matter.
They represent lives that might easily be dismissed because they are neither majestic nor particularly useful from a human point of view. Hynak gives them a place in the story precisely because they are easy to overlook. Their value does not depend upon whether the more powerful creatures understand their purpose.
“They are the strands we never see,” Hynak said. “Yet they are as essential as the lion or the human. The web cannot hold without them.”
There is an ecological message in that idea, but there is also a broader examination of how we assign value.
Humans naturally notice the spectacular. A lion commands attention in a way that a tiny creature beneath the soil does not. The same instinct can shape the stories people tell about strength: leaders receive attention, warriors become heroes, and dramatic actions are remembered.
Hynak is interested in what happens beyond that spotlight.
Sometimes courage belongs to the character who admits fear. Sometimes loyalty belongs to the one willing to question a leader. Sometimes power belongs not to one commanding figure but to many small creatures acting together.
That perspective also helps explain why Hynak chose fiction to explore ecological responsibility. Facts can describe drought, extinction, and changing ecosystems. Fiction allows her to give those relationships voices, histories, and consequences. A lion is not simply an environmental symbol. A tiny creature does not exist merely to teach humans a lesson. Each occupies its own place within the living world.
Hynak describes interconnectedness as the heart of Roars Across the World, summed up in a deceptively simple idea: “All are Connected, and therefore All are Needed.”
Perhaps that is why some of the smallest characters carry such weight.
The lion may have the roar powerful enough to cross the night.
But Hynak’s world cannot survive on roars alone.
To discover Barbara Hynak’s Roars Across the World and enter a world where every voice, every creature, and every strand matters, readers can find the book on Amazon.
