Review: The Wolf

The Wolf by Leo Carew
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a 4-star review. That is a barely accurate estimate of my experience.

The people from the south invade the people in the northlands. The people from the south are a prototypical pre-industrial western civilization bent on conquest. The people from the north are supposedly "barbarians" who train for battle, are somewhat larger in stature, and who live in concert with nature; think North American First Peoples but with buildings. They have no written record; everything is recalled by memory with people specifically being tasked with that purpose.

The wily northerners eventually win the day and toss the southerners back across the river to their well-ordered cities and farms.

This was an interesting book full of a broad range of interesting characters. The world-building was good but not great. The northerners had to devote a ton of manpower into maintaining a record of their history. Historians are charged with remembering small bits of history. The number of fighters seems outsize compared with the number of tradespeople needed to support a civilization. There are just too many elements that don't fit together.

Added to those features is the presentation of the northerners as being a moral and just people because they "live with nature".

A final criticism is that this is obviously the first book in a series. The story is intended to extend into multiple volumes and what you get in Book 1 is really just the first chapter of the larger story.

From my perspective, a reader should be able to walk away from book 1 and feel like they have had a complete experience. If it was good enough, then book 2 will get read. But there should be enough closure that a reader can walk away after book 1 and not feel like anything was missing.

View all my reviews