This one has been on my to-read list for a while. Let's take a look. Spoilers ahead.
In the kingdom of Vaal lived three wolf tribes: the elusive and almost-extinct white wolves; the noble silver wolves (the Silver Manes); and the villainous darker wolves. When the dark wolves under the leadership of Fang attack the silver wolves, pack-leader Thunder does what he can to keep them safe. One of their pack members, Felix, is attacked by a mole within his own pack working for Fang. He narrowly survives, but now has no memory of who he is. Felix will now have to survive, with nobody but a human and two inexperienced wolves as company. Meanwhile, the Silver Manes pack is still in danger.
I'd say this was a pretty solid wolf xenofiction. It had a lot going for it that I think made it quite good. One of these aspects is the characters. I quite liked them, honestly. Sure, some of them could be generic, but there were also a few rather well-written ones in here. Of course there's Felix, who goes through his arc of self-realization and becoming a hero, but there's also characters like Moonshadow and Thor and even Streak, who I thought were rather well-written and some of them had a neat amount of depth to them. Streak maybe isn't as deep as the former two, but he was still enjoyable to read and I liked his villainous role in the story, never quite knowing which step towards evil he would make next. Heck, there's even a nameless bear side character who makes for an enjoyable ally and has a neat mini-arc of befriending Felix.
My personal favorite character was Thunder, the elderly leader of the Silver Manes, who is very spiritual and has noble intentions, but can also be rather cowardly and flawed. He was probably one of the most nuanced characters out of the entire book, making him a joy to read. Of course sadly he had to die in the end (RIP), but he really did make this book memorable for me.
If I did have a bone to pick with the characters, I'd have to say that the main villain in this, Fang, is really nothing special as far as wolf xenofiction goes. He just kind of falls into that type of "powerhungry evil dark wolf" villain a lot of wolf xenofictions have going on. His motivations weren't very interesting and his presence usually just felt kinda stereotypical villain-ish rather than him having a lot of nuance or engaging aspects to his character.
The only mildly interesting part of his character is that he is Moonshadow's father, but the book doesn't do a whole lot with this concept other than it being a big "oomph" to drop near the climax (thought it was rather predictable, at least to me). Moonshadow never really considers joining him or sees Fang differently because he is her father, neither do the wolves around her look down on her for being his son. It's just kind of an aspect that's introduced but never fully developed.
Overall I'd say the pace of this book was rather good. Some of the parts where Felix was readjusting to his "new life" after he forgot his identity were a bit slower, but I appreciate that despite him being the protagonist we also got to check back in on the Silver Manes once every while from another wolf's POVs, such as Thunder's or Moonshadows'. It made for a nice change of pace as sometimes Felix's parts of the story could start to feel a bit same-y (a lot of him learning to get used to things, meeting new characters, and having thoughts and conversations about not knowing his past). Plus, it means we got to spend more time with Thunder, which I would never complain about.
I do also have to bring up that I spotted several mistakes in this book, mostly typos. It wasn't a huge amount or anything, but enough to be slightly distracting when one reared its head. I'm unsure if this is an indie published book or not, but either way it was kinda annoying that these mistakes were present. And, while not directly being mistakes, there was also several instances of the story (which is told through a wolf's POV, of course) using terminology that wild wolves definitely wouldn't have a concept of. It was kind of distracting.
Overall though, I very much enjoyed reading this book and I think it's qualitatively mostly sound, sans some clichés regarding the villains and the typos. The plot is engaging enough, we get quite a few engaging characters to meet and the character development overall is quite lovely. There's also some interesting world-building to boot.
Rating: 4/5
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