Phew, it was some hassle to get this book. Originally ordered it in November but after several shipping delays I ended up cancelling the order and just buying the ebook. Shame, I'd have liked a physical copy on my wolf shelf.
Anyways, let's take a look at this one. Spoilers ahead.
Marak is a gray wolf whose entire pack is killed by poachers. Marak survives, but only by a hair and is severely injured. A local vet couple takes him in, much to the chagrin of the conservative anti-wolf town, which mostly consists of cattle farmers. Ed Viccary, the son of the vets, decides against his parents' wishes to set the wolf free, but this causes a chain reaction that he couldn't have foreseen. The town bands together against the Viccary Family and sets out to hunt Marak down for good. Will the wolf survive and the Viccarys escape punishment?
As far as your basic kids' "save the maligned wild animal"-stories go this is pretty much the basic definition of it. It's a bland execution and I could predict where things were going easily with no real twists or turns except near the end.
The characters are horribly "stock"-y and very one-note. Ed and the Viccarys are the obvious good guys with no real flaws to speak of, and the farmers, hunters and Ed's bullies are one-note villains or antagonists. A lot of black and white thinking here which I get, since it's a children's book, but it also fails to highlight that situations like this aren't always like this and are often morally gray. It fails to touch on the nuance of it all by having everyone be overly good or overly bad like this is a simple cartoon or something. I am of course very pro-wolf myself, so I'd side with the Viccarys, but I don't think that completely demonizing everyone with a different opinion is exactly doing situations like this, which are actual hot-button topics in real life, any favors.
I also just gotta say that Marak, despite seemingly being the main character based on the title and cover, is really more of a plot device than an actual character. He's the wolf who gets the story going, but the main plot is to be found with the humans, not the wolf himself. Which is a shame because it results in Marak not really feeling like a character at all, more so just like a generic wolf stand-in because the story obviously needed one. His chapters, particularly the ones where he's in the wild on his own, just feel like generic wolf-y filler where he does basic wolf stuff. Find a mate, hunt, fight rival wolves, try to survive, etc. But these don't really contribute to the overall story, which, again, is to be found with the human characters. Wouldn't it have been cool if somehow Marak's actions (aside from him just...existing and being a wolf) somehow affected the story? But nope, he's just a plot device.
The one part of the story that somewhat surprised me is that Marak does ultimately die at the end, but aside from that this book is genuinely Predictability Central, like I've already stated before. I'll give the author some credit for a more unexpected and realistic ending, but that doesn't save the rest of the story from being predictable and cookie-cutter (for this type of story) as all hell.
Finally, I just want to say that the cover feels lazy. Marak in this book is a black wolf, but the cover depicts a gray wolf. Was it really that hard to look for a stock image of a black wolf instead of a gray? This just looks like they didn't bother and went with the first wolf image they could find.
Overall this isn't outright a bad book, but it is very predictable and is lacking in nuance regarding the situation. Yes, I do ultimately think that Ed and the Viccarys are in the right here, but with how ridiculously over the top evil the villain characters are here I don't think this book is going to change any anti-wolf person's stance on the topic.
Rating: 3/5
No comments:
Post a Comment