With Wolf Quest having been out for ages and how creative its community can be, I'm surprised it took this long for someone (or rather, two someones) to write a book based on its storyline and gameplay! Presuming that Seeing Red is the first, that is.
For those not in the know, Wolf Quest is a game where one plays as a dispersal wolf in Yellowstone and completes various goals, such as hunting elk, seeking a mate and establishing a pack. The first edition of the game from years ago was free, but in more recent years it has gotten a big overhaul, leading to a brand new pay-to-play polished version of the game. I myself do own both versions, however unfortunately my computer simply cannot handle the Anniversary Edition even at the lowest graphics and framerate, so I am mostly just stuck watching other people play the game. It definitely looks great, though!
So let's take a look at the journey of such one wolf and her quest, based on the gameplay on Littlesprout's YouTube channel. Spoilers ahead.
Meet Leopard, a young dispersal wolf originating from a pack where only the strongest survive. She has made it her personal goal to establish her own pack, Blood Pack, on the territory of the current Redrock Pack. Joining her on this journey is Sparrow, a former-Redrock coywolf who wants to see Leopard succeed. However, with the remaining few Redrocks forming an alliance with the local coyote kingdom, taking over Redrock territory in order to establish a new pack may prove much harder than initially thought.
For the most part, I definitely liked this book. I was initially a bit apprehensive that it might just follow the original Wolf Quest gameplay too much, with the exact order of finding a mate, hunting an elk, establishing a territory and raising pups. That's very much not the case. While you can tell that elements were inspired by the game, the order and way things are executed are also very much thrown around.
There's quite a few other things I liked. For example, the setting. It's (presumably) still set in or around Yellowstone, however there's a post-apocalyptic twist. And not an ancient one where the humans vanished many, many years ago, like in Summers' Dogs of the Spires series, but rather one where the "Makers" vanished only a few lifetimes ago, with the oldest wolf in the prologue still actively remembering them being around. The series isn't overly post-apocalyptic, with the setting mainly being simply the nature with some human elements in it and not something like an abandoned city à la Dogs of the Spires for a main setting, but one can still tell that the humans have been gone for a while. I'm also glad that they didn't explain what exactly caused the Makers to abandon ship, they're just gone and that's all the context we need. No need to get too exposition-y.
I also liked how we didn't have a very standard main character. In a lot of anthropomorphic xenofictions, our heroes will often times be the do-gooders, however, Leopard is not an overly sympathetic protagonist. I'm not sure if I'd qualify her as a downright horrible person, either, but let's just say that she has quite the body count to her name. Heck, the first few chapters are pretty much her just killing one wolf and then a bunch of coyotes.
However, she does actually have a moral compass, and you kind of get where she's coming from (not that that excuses her murdering so many). In her old pack, its implied that only the strongest survived, so it kind of makes sense that this "kill first, think later" mentality was ingrained into her brain so much. She also keeps trying to justify her kills. She sometimes even seems to know that she's wrong, but will find a way to (not always rightfully) justify it later. I just thought it was interesting that our protagonist isn't your standard do-gooder and could even be seen as an antagonist or even a villain from another perspective.
I also like how initially the reason Leopard doesn't seem to kill Sparrow isn't because she particularly likes him, but rather because she finds him pathetic. They do bond later but I just thought it was kinda funny. Heck, he even ends up joining her in her conquest despite knowing it'll mean he'll have to see all his family members die.
Then there's the other characters. This is where I feel the story isn't as strong. I just didn't get very strong "personality vibes" from most of them. Sparrow is definitely a good one, and the character with the second most page-time and development, however the others all feel kind of bland or like they only have one trait. I do like some of them (e.g. Daffodil), but they don't always have a whole lot to them. This is implied to be a first book in a series based on the cliffhanger ending, however I feel that for a first appearance they could've had a bit of a stronger impact.
Another slight criticism I have is the lack of "culture" we get. I instantly got really interested when we saw that the coyotes had a monarchy rather than the basic pack-structure the wolves have, however it's never really established. We know they have a King and a lot of members, but that's pretty much where it ends, when there's so much potential to establish an unique culture to the coyotes! Specifically because they're a different species from the wolves there's a lot of opportunity to make their society and way of life different from their larger lupine cousins.
The same also applies to Leopard's old pack. I feel like we didn't get to know enough about them. It's where Leopard hails from, it's the reason why she's so vicious, but we never really get any establishing of them outside of some narration by our protagonist and a tiny prologue. I would've loved to see why they were so harsh, how they got to be like this, what Elder's leadership was like, maybe some flashback snippets of Leopard growing up. Now we get little to nothing and it feels like missed potential when we could've had more establishing of our protagonist's character outside of some small narration snippets. Maybe this is something for a future prequel, because I absolutely want to find out how Leopard became to be such a ruthless killer.
So what we got when it comes to the packs/monarchy was interesting, but it had a lot more potential. Another thing that could be considered a nitpick, but also couldn't be, is Leopard's name. How on Earth do these North American wolves know what a leopard is? Those live in Africa, with an entire ocean between the two. And it's not like a medium/big cat name couldn't have worked for a wolf. She could've been called Panther (coming from Florida panther), Lion (coming from mountain lion), or something like Cougar, Puma or Catamount. All of these are (alternative) names for cougars that very easily could've worked.
All of the other wolves have names that are easily justified with them being stuff like nouns that the critters come across on a daily basis. Then there's Leopard. Maybe another way this could've worked was if these were wolves originating from a zoo, so they know what a leopard is based on that, but nope, these are wild wolves/coywolves that have been wild for generations.
However, with that said, I did thoroughly enjoy this book! I don't think it's as strong as the first Dogs of the Spires trilogy (also by Summers), but it definitely was a good book for establishing this new series (if it is one, please don't leave us hanging on a cliffhanger). If we do get more books, I look forward to reading those next and hope some of the issues I had with this one may be improved upon!
Also, one criticism I have that has no impact on the book whatsoever but rather just the cover, is that the art is a bit uncanny valley. The artist is definitely talented and the textures and environments look great, but I don't think the human eyes on this semi-realistic wolf works. Just something I thought I'd bring up.
Rating: 4/5
No comments:
Post a Comment