Wolfsong

An unsteady first entry to a series I'll likely continue and that I expect will enjoy the later entries more. If nothing else, I can pat myself on the back for pushing through a premise that initially had me feeling pretty uncomfortable.

Fantasy is my "maybe this time I'll like it!" genre. From fully-fictional worlds with paragraphs of background exposition to only slightly-incredible magical realism, it never really sticks for me, but I think this is the closest I've gotten to enjoying it in a long while. Basically we have here a setting where 1) werewolves are real and 2) magic is real, but we learn this as readers at the same steady pace as our mundane protagonist does. So far so good.

And really the paranormal aspects really just serve as a vehicle to drive home on the themes of family, loyalty/betrayal, and self-worth. And boy are those themes hammered on! While I appreciate (and even enjoyed) how characters in this book end up in painful arguments and disagreements with each other even though neither side wanted to fight about it, many scenes felt repetitive because one person or another just could not let go of a slight they had suffered at the hands of another. It wasn't often, but there were times when I thought to myself, "oh wow, they're still fighting about this..."

The prose also is a little repetitive and tends to favor very short sentences during emotional moments that I could've done without, and I'm just gonna say it: I felt weird about the age gap between the two romantic leads. They first meet when one is 16 and the other is 10, and the younger one maintains a possessive fixation towards the protagonist that is meant to be chalked up to his uncontrollable animalistic urges (remember the whole werewolf thing?), but it rubbed me the wrong way.

Still, the Found Family trope is pulled off well here, and I enjoyed the large cast of background characters. And learning that successive books in this series follow the perspectives of minor characters from this first entry is a plus and not a minus for me.

This is the first shifter story I've read and I don't think I'm a fan of the tropes I saw in it.

The first one is not specific to these stories but it bugs me every time I see it: on one hand, Ox - the main character - is described as a little slow and rather average, probably so that readers can identify with him, or at least empathize with him. On the other hand, he accomplishes unheard-of feats, and the other characters keep telling him how unique and extraordinary he is.

To be clear, I'm not against wish fulfillment stories, or just stories where there's an obvious fantasy at play. For instance The Goblin Emperor reads like a fantasy for people who have been mistreated in the past and feel that, if they were given a lot of power, they would use it to treat other people with the kindness they didn't receive. (And also get a hyper competent and loyal secretary to help them understand social codes; ugh, the dream.) And I was very much the target audience.

But a main character that's at the same time insignificant and amazing does nothing for me.

Which brings me to the more specific tropes I disliked: wolves mate for life, and Ox is chosen by a werewolf just after he talked to him. Why? Because he's awesome! Even though he didn't do anything special at this point!

There are also Alpha wolves (a thing that is notoriously a myth a this point, on top of not being a very interesting literary device here I think), who get the devotion and the trust of the rest of their pack. Why? "Because they're the Alpha" (you can't miss it, it's repeated all the time). To be fair, the story challenges the idea that Alpha-ness is something that is only given or taken, and not something that you can develop through your own leadership. The Alpha's sense of responsibility to their pack is also a major plot point. But it seems that once you're an Alpha, it's for the rest of your life.

Also pack dynamics are barely there. There are a few conflicts that prevent the two main characters from getting together right away, but most characters are very nice and feel supernaturally drawn to the Alpha, which simplifies a lot of things.

In a nutshell, I feel like the story glosses over what makes relationships difficult to build and to maintain. There is authority without clear legitimacy. There is immediate attachment for life. And there's having a community that welcomes you with open arms because you don't realize it but you're totally amazing, and you would give your life for them.

And I get why it's enticing. I'm in my late thirties, and seeing friends or family often means planning everything weeks in advance because everyone is busy and/or lives far away and/or answers: "you know, it's complicated with kids :/" There's something so appealing about the idea of a close-knit group of loved ones living around you, that are so connected to each other that sometimes talking isn't even necessary.

But in the story, so little of it feels truly earned that it doesn't work for me.

Wolfsong is the story if a young man, Ox, whose father has left him and his mother. Ox finds family and more with a pack of werewolves that move in next door. 

I didn’t know until reading it that this book was being republished (it was originally published in 2015), presumably to capitalize on the popularity of House on the Cerulean Sea.

I loved HotCS. It was unique and amazing. The same can’t really be said of Wolfsong. It is a good example of the wolf pack genre, but falls into the traps and tropes of the genre without distinguishing itself. I’m not a fan of the whole Alpha trope. For one, it is not an accurate way of representing wolf family structures, which we’ve known for 20 years (at least 10 when the book was written). For another, it feels like repeating it merely reinforces outdated ideas of hierarchy (see also Jordan Peterson’s lobster nonsense). 

The characters here are a combination of well-drawn and tropey placeholders. Some I liked others weren’t fully drawn enough to feel anything for. 

All in all, I think this book shows how an author can grow and mature as a writer. It is amazing to see TJ Klune go from writing something that is a decent example of wolfpack fiction to creating something that truly stands on its own. 

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor for providing the advance reader’s copy.