Book Review: Wolf by Kristof Smeyers

More Dutch wolf non-fiction!

In Wolf, Smeyers takes us on a trip through history and shows us various aspects of how wolves were thought of and treated at the time.

This was a very good read, if not a bit short. I genuinely had a great time reading about all the various topics Smeyers wrote about, from werewolves to a historical fear of wolves to the Beast of Gévaudan to the the Roman she-wolf who raised Romulus and Remus. It covers a wide array of topics surrounding wolves in our cultures and lore and history.

The pacing is one thing I can see put some people off, though, as it's paced quite quickly and doesn't stick around too long to one single topic. Which I personally also kind of liked, since we get to read about a lot in a short amount of time, but at the same time it'd have been nice if we'd gotten just a bit more information on some of these topics. But the book is rather short (only 200 pages or so) and it has to cover a lot of ground, resulting in shorter chapters on each topic. It didn't bother me too much personally, but at the same time I definitely would've liked it if this book was longer and went even more in-depth where possible.

Also (though this is more of a personal preference) I'd have liked it if the author went a bit more into the topic of wolves themselves (as in, the actual species, not just the culture surrounding them), but I can forgive it since this is primarily a history book which happens to be about wolves as a topic in general, not a non-fiction book explicitly about the species.

Overall I had a great time reading this, though. Could've been longer but that's really my only sort-of gripe with it.

Rating: 5/5