I originally read & reviewed this book back in 2015, but since my old reviews aren't any good, let's take another look at it! Spoilers ahead.
We meet Nashoga and his pack, the Redstone Pack. He has everything he could possibly want: the alpha position, a beautiful soon-to-be mate, and many friends and packmates. All of that is instantly changed one day when a black wolf named Farkas takes over his pack, and Nashoga is forced to flee. Exhausted, he more or less by accident ends up befriending an elk named Buck. The two decide to work together in order to allow Nashoga to free his pack and regain the alpha position.
Decent is the best I feel would describe this book. I'm not sure if I'd call it "good", though. The story is pretty cookie-cutter and I could tell where it was going a lot of the time. The characters also aren't very three-dimensional, even our leads, with them often having one or two traits and that being their entire personalities. Heck, the villain is even one of the very one-dimensional mustache-twirling type. So on that front it's okay but not very good. It lacks depth.
That's honestly a good way to describe a lot of the book. The pacing is fast, so a lot of the happenings in the book go by quite quickly and don't really sink in properly because we're going from point A to point B so soon. A good example of this would be his friendship with Buck. The two go from being enemies (at least, Nashoga dislikes Buck at first) to literal best pals over the span of what feels only like two days. Then, at the end, Buck dies, and we're supposed to feel sad because he had this intense bond with Nashoga, but it really feels pacing-wise like they only knew each other for a few days and that's obviously way too short to establish a friendship that's as close as theirs is described.
There's also the slightly questionable aspects. For example, having both prey and predator species talk. I'm usually not a fan of this because it kind of gives us some cannibalistic-ish vibes towards the predators. I know it's technically not the case since they're not the same species, but to have one sentient talking species devour another definitely has some odd implications.
An example where this worked much better is Fell by David Clement-Davies. There, the prey animals could talk to Fell, but only because he has a power called the Sight, which no other wolf currently alive possesses. He also clearly has at least some issues with eating certain prey because of this, such as deciding not to eat a beaver family after their patriarch shared a word with him.
But with this universe, where all prey and predators could just easily communicate, it feels weird.
The other questionable aspect: some very familiar aspects of the story. I'm not outright accusing the author of plagiarism here, but it's definitely something to think about. One of the wolf packs we come across is called the Thunder Clan, which is identical to ThunderClan from Warriors, one of the most popular xenofiction series of all time. There's also a stoic male white wolf character whose name happens to be Kiba. You know, like the stoic male white wolf character named Kiba from Wolf's Rain. Like I'm not saying you can't use the name Kiba as it's just the Japanese word for "fang", but to use it on a character of the exact same species, color, gender and kind-of personality just feels a bit too familiar if you catch my drift.
Again, maybe all of this is a coincidence, but it's just something to keep in mind. When I get to the sequel I'll have a look whether or not this trend continues.
So overall, while I like the premise of this book being a pretty classic "wolf xenofiction" story and the draw of an unlikely friendship, the execution is very so-and-so. Very basic characters and plot, the friendship between Buck and Nashoga feels rushed and therefore not as genuine, and there is just some weird implications with both predators and prey being able to talk.
Not a bad book, and if you do like wolf xenofiction and none of these things bother you I guess you could check it out, but I wouldn't actively go out of my way to recommend it.
Rating: 3/5
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