Stars: 2.5 out of 5
This book has a very unique premise – it’s a world of sentient animals with not a human in sight. Fun huh? According to their mythology, some great magical battle happened a long time ago that gave sentience to some animals while leaving others as animals. So we have sentient wolves and foxes as well as their normal animal counterparts. I couldn’t wait to see how such a society would evolve.
Unfortunately, I think that this quirk of all of our characters being bipedal animals was sorely underutilized. Apart from some mentions of Leran swishing his tail in irritation or twitching his ears, he might as well be a human instead of a wolf. He even prefers to ride horses instead of running on all fours, and my question here is: how? Wouldn’t his tail be in the way when he rides?
We have wolves and foxes, but also ravens and cranes, and antelopes, and other animals, but they all just behave like humans. Wouldn’t ravens be able to fly? Why not use them as aerial support or scouts? Also, birds have hollow bones, so they would not be able to wear heavy guard armor. Why not use the buffalo or other bovine species as heavy infantry?
Just working with the limitations and advantages of each animal species would have made this world so much richer, and made for a better book!
My biggest issue though, is that I started this book mildly irritated with Leran, and ended it hating his guts. He is an extremely unlikeable character. He is selfish and immature. And honestly, he causes almost all of the troubles in this book himself. He is so self-absorbed that nobody else matters. When his best friend dies protecting him, Leran wallows in self-pity and not once even wonders how his other friend feels about all this. I mean, she just lost her best friend as well, but Leran doesn’t even ask her how she is doing.
He spends the book lashing out at everyone who tries to reason with him or even show him the error of his ways, then going all “woe me” when everything goes wrong, and he gets people killed. And even then, his horror about getting people killed revolves around him – he failed, what will everyone think of him, he isn’t good enough, yada-yada. He never thinks of the actual people who lost their lives because he was so bone-headed.
Leran also reads as very immature for someone who is 28 years old. With all his mood swings and lack of impulse control, I pictured him more like a teenager.
The story itself moves at a pretty fast pace, and the fight scenes are pretty immersive, though the book suffers from a bit of tell, not show, especially when it comes to setting up the world and mythology.
All in all, I think it might appeal to a YA audience who like coming-of-age stories and are willing to overlook an unlikeable protagonist.
PS: My thanks to NetGalley for my review copy.