The Moïra trilogy has been on my radar for ages now, even going back to when I was a young teen when it got just translated into Dutch. Yeah, this is another one of these books that (so far) doesn't have an English translation. Dutch is my native language, but I very much prefer to read in English. However, since I had no choice for this one, I bought all copies in Dutch (side note, these Dutch editions are really expensive, so I got them all second hand) and now it's time to review them all! Spoilers ahead.
In this book we follow Aléa, a young beggar girl who comes across a powerful ring, and Imala, a white she-wolf cast out from her pack after bearing a litter of pups without her alpha's permission. The story mainly follows Aléa's arc, with her being sought after by the forces of the evil Maolmórdha. She joins up with some allies, including a dwarf, a bard and a druid, and the group flees to the forest elves in hope of discovering information about Aléa's power there.
I genuinely didn't know what to expect from this. I tried to read it before once when I was very young and it'd just come out, but it was too much for me to process so I stopped pretty soon into book one. Now that I'm older, I can definitely see why.
While the basic premise is good (standard for fantasy, but still decent) it's the execution that often is a bit lacking. First of all, there's way too many exposition dumps in this. It's not even delivered to us in dialogue most of the time, the narrator of the story will just directly tell us something that happened in the past that's plot-relevant at the moment for pages on end. It really breaks the pace of what is supposed to be Aléa's journey and not a history book on the world this takes place in, Gaelia. Heck, there's even a bunch of appendices with brief historical information, so I don't get why Loevenbruck didn't just stick most of the world's history in there and keep exposition in the story to a minimum.
Then there's the chapters. They're long. Can I deal with that? Sure, though I prefer shorter ones. My main gripe? The constant perspective-shifting within each chapter. It's usually not even announced, the next paragraph after a blank space will just be another character's POV. There isn't even clear breakers (such as a few asterisks) to make it clear where what character's POV ends, it just kind of happens. I don't mind slight perspective-shifting within a chapter, but it's just done to the extreme here, and sometimes even within the same paragraph. We'll suddenly learn a side-character's thoughts or opinions on a situation or whatever, when they're not the main POV character for said paragraph.
Okay, so that's pretty negative. Are there any good things? Well, the characters weren't awful. I know that sounds like a back-handed compliment, but I genuinely liked some of them. Unfortunately Aléa is not the most interesting character, neither is Imala, but the side characters really made it for me. Whether it's the druid Phelim, the cheerful dwarf Mjoll, or the constantly-bantering duo of Faith and Galiad. The side characters honestly had so much more personality than the main characters.
And, honestly, a lack of a personality is a bit more forgivable for Imala. She's a wolf and while her and her race are clearly sentient, they don't use dialogue to convey their emotions and thoughts. I really appreciated this. So, with this restriction, obviously it's a bit harder to get a personality across, though not impossible.
But then there's Aléa, who just feels a bit like a generic blank slate. I guess her major character trait is that she's strong-willed, but that's really where her depth stops. She's pretty much your generic orphan-turned-chosen one fantasy protagonist. Maybe she'll become a better-developed character by the time of book two, but in book one she felt utterly lacking.
The world building was decent, but I really can't give it any more than that. Gaelia, basically an alternate version of medieval Ireland, definitely is inhabited by some interesting races, but we don't really delve all that much into their culture. One of our deuteragonists is a dwarf, but we learn so little about his actual race, which is a shame. There's also gnomes, who are pretty much one-off characters that get not depth. Finally, the forest elves do have some very minor depth to them, with their seasonal cycles and "we are one"-mentality, but even the information regarding their race we do get feels rudimentary at most.
When I read fantasy, I love reading about these fantastical races. They can have such different cultures from Earth, you can get so creative with it. But in The Wolf and the Child we're pretty much stuck with your basic medieval Europe setting that happens to involve some magic and different races we don't even really delve into. Again, this may be fixed in future books, but it just feels like such a shame when there's definitely potential for interesting worldbuilding regarding these peoples.
So, yeah, so far, this was a bit of a rocky start. I'm not calling the book bad by any means, it just feels like it has potential that isn't realized. Here's to hoping book two improves on things!
Rating: 3/5
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