Book two of this series! Despite a few gripes I had with the first one I still greatly enjoyed Wolfsong, so I was excited to see what came next. Spoilers ahead.
This book is written from Gordo's POV and takes place before, during and after Wolfsong. We see how, as a youngster, Gordo had to deal with an abusive father (who was also a witch) and had a troubled relationship with Mark Bennett. After the events of book one, the wolves are recuperating but a new threat seems on the rise. An infection among Omegas is spreading across the wolves, and two of the Bennett members get infected as well. Also, a hunter from the King clan is dead-set on hunting down the werewolves. Gordo will now have to find a way to protect his pack while also coming to terms with his feelings towards Mark.
What a book, it was truly a ride from start to finish. I also just want to gush about how much I love TJ Klune's slightly unorthodox writing style, with short but gripping sentences and paragraphs. It just makes the books read away very nicely and is very easy on the eyes. I also love (most) of Klune's characters. They're not all super rounded or developed but they are still easily distinguishable and have some traits that clearly set them apart. Whether it's the Bennetts or Team Human or someone else, there's bound to be a few characters the reader will love.
The main highlight here is truly Gordo and Mark, though, as their relationship takes center stage like the one between Joe and Ox did last book. And while one of my gripes with book one was that their relationship didn't always feel healthy and was thus at times harder to root for, I did not have this feeling in the slightest for Gordo and Mark. Neither of the two is perfect, with Mark having left Gordo behind for years and Gordo holding a really big grudge against him for it, and Mark in turn ending up for a while with Dale, but overall this relationship was still one I was rooting for, just one with a lot of bumps in the road. I was just begging for Mark not to die or completely go feral before he and Gordo could restore their relationship at least a bit. Luckily they do have a happy ending.
I also just want to give a shoutout to some of the other relationships which I really liked. Joe and Ox make for a powerful Alpha pair in this book, the relationship between Rico and tough-as-nails Bambi was imperfect but fun to read and the brotherly bond between Carter and Kelly really gets to shine. If they were to get a POV book somewhere down the line, I really wouldn't mind.
The conflict also felt rather heavy this time around, with us not just having one main threat like last book (Richard Collins), but multiple. There's the infection. There's Michelle trying to wipe out the Bennett Pack. And there's Meredith "Elijah" King who wants to hunt down the werewolves and has partnered with Michelle. So that's quite a few threats to balance and for the most part it works really well. Heck, even in the background you can tell there's the looming shadow of Gordo's father Robert Livingstone who seems to be pulling some strings in the background of it all, even if he is not featured heavily in the book itself (mostly in some flashbacks and the epilogue).
My main gripe, like with Richard Collins in the last book, though is that Klune's villains are usually a bit on the weaker side. Not physically or mentally, but I mean that they're usually a bit over-the-top evil and not very three-dimensional (or at least we're not shown them as such, maybe this'll happen in future books). With this book again Michelle and Elijah are just evil and that's kind of it. They do have interesting motivations and I in particular found Elijah with her religious fanaticism to be the more interesting of the two, but overall they're not that strong as far as the characters go.
Klune is very good at writing three-dimensional and distinct characters on the side of the good guys, so I'm just a bit sad that so far on the side of the villains there's not much difference or nuance to them. They're all just kind of evil dudes who want to see the wolves (or more specifically, the Bennett Pack) wiped out for one reason or another.
Overall I still had a great time reading this book though, and I look forward to the last two in the series, presuming this is a four-book deal.
Rating: 5/5
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