Posted by Another werewolf book! This one opens with an execution with the son of the executed watching in the audience. I have to say this was one of the more engaging opening chapters I’ve read from my batch. There’s definitely a more polished feel to the scene and writing style and I could see the entire scene and I had an understanding of the world within a chapter or two. This immediately lets the reader know they’re in a secondary world with witches, werewolves, sprites, fairies, goblins, elves, humans etc., and they’re not all getting along.
I am not typically a person who reaches for werewolf stories, I usually end up bouncing off of them so I’ve just stopped reaching for them. That said, this one set itself apart fairly quickly and I think it’s because there was no stupid bullshit about alpha/beta male thing that I see often werewolf stories. As a quick science lesson, wolves don’t have alphas. That idea gained a foothold in our society back in the ’70s when a lot of flawed research was published and it got into our collective knowledge and then stuck there. However, it’s been repeatedly proven to be bad science and an inaccurate way to look at wolf behavior/social structure but still this idea persists — here’s one sauce you can read if you’re curious– https://www.iflscience.com/the-term-alpha-male-is-all-a-lie-66483 Okay, I digress.
The Lycans in this world are hunted by humans along with their Terain counterparts, (sprites, goblins, satyrs) basically any non-human being. There’s a timestamp at the beginning of each chapter which I found super useful. Not only did I have a clear guide on how much time is passing between each chapter, but they use our calendar and date system making it feel like an alternate Earth setting. The story starts in December 1798 and the world’s social structure all match what I feel like the 1800s was probably like. (Disclosure, I am not a historian) There are cannons, rifles/pistols, wooden ships, kings and queens with rebellions going strong in each country.
These Lycans/Terains are trying to form an alliance with humans who don’t suck so together they can overthrow the humans who do suck to build a world that’s fair for everyone. I think this story will appeal to those who like class based societies and the revolutions that those societies inevitably cause. Our main characters (and there are a few) are mostly members of the resistance and they all have their own journeys to try and assist the resistance in overthrowing the government. We do get glimpses from the other side’s point of view, and they’re definitely the antagonists. There’s not a lot of “I don’t know which side I want to win” that you can sometimes get from seeing two sides of a war. This war is pretty straight forward, there’s a class of humans that hate the Terran and would prefer to eliminate them from the world rather than treat them like equal sentient beings vs. the Terrans who just want to be allowed to live in peace.
I think the Witches are some of the more interesting world building elements since they’re partially responsible for bringing the Terran to this world but they help the humans hunt them rather than protect them. They’re some of the only human magic users, and they’re always female. They’re typically used by the kings or queens of the various realms to find, torture, and execute the Terran on a public stage. There’s one known as The Dove who always dresses in white, and later on we get a few POV chapters from her.
The whole plot of this story is that Weylyn, the leader of the rebellion, is working on setting up various resistance groups throughout the various kingdoms and queendoms in order to form an alliance with the one queen who seems genuinely interested in creating a fair world. Queen Sophia has told Weylyn that if he can build a resistance in each realm that she will declare war and use the resistance as a force on the inside to assist her breaching the gates from the outside. So, the resistance splits up and goes to the various kingdoms to set up resistance cells in hopes they will be backed by one of the bigger forces in the world. This splits up the POVs and sends them all over the continent which gives this an epic scope, we really get a deep dive into each of these different countries. They are all roughly based on real-world countries like France, England, and Italy and you can see that in the dress/clothing and eating habits of each country along with a few French words thrown in here and there.
As far as our POVs, there’s Olly, a sprite who’s paired with a grumpy but lovable Lycan for most of the book. I like their odd-couple pairing going on, and they even flip flop roles as the book goes on. The Lycan, Keagan, was originally the hot blooded impulsive one wiht Olly being the voice of reason. As Olly is repeatedly horrifically traumatized throughout the book she becomes more and more impulsive and more manic, making decisions that could go badly for her and everyone around her. She’s an interesting character study on trauma, grief, and losing touch with the will to live.
There’s Rosalie, Weylyn’s love interest, who is in charge of the main resistance cell in the capital city, she’s a human who has allied herself with the Terran. She has a lot of family ties that also lead to loss, but her main struggle I think is for purpose. She often feels left out because she’s not someone who runs into battle, she’s more on the sidelines giving other sorts of supports and she doesn’t always feel that’s enough.
Then there’s Weylyn who could maybe be considered the main character as he leads all the cells from each region. He’s a werewolf who watched his father be executed which sparked his need for revenge and justice. He’s honestly a cinnamon roll and I’m not sure how he got into a leadership position when he’s so squishy. I love the fact that Weylyn and Rosalie just have a genuinely good relationship and that there’s no toxic bullshit going on with the romance.
As far as draw backs, there was a little bit of convenient timing with certain scenes, one example happened early on where one group of POV characters arrived just in time to interrupt an execution of one of the resistance members — the thing is though they were just getting off a boat after a LONG journey. It’s a wooden boat with regular old sails so the fact this meandering boat that probably had a really wide arrival time window just happened to land minutes before an execution is set to take place. That is just impeccable timing because they ran across the city just in time to save their friend. Things like this weren’t all that common but I did take note that things resolved a little too easily sometimes. That said, things are tougher going for the characters as the story goes on and a LOT of the characters end up dying by the end of it. The ending battle was really intense and a bunch of my favorites died.
This is a long chunky book. On one hand I really enjoyed how thoroughly set up the characters and world was by the time the meat of the story rolled around. I felt very much so like I knew who these people were, why I should care, how the world works, why they were at war, and all the important points. On the other hand, 700 pages is a long, long book, the pacing did start to drag in the middle for me, but your mileage may vary there.
I am marking this book as SAFE!!