A wolf xenofiction I thought looked interesting. Spoilers ahead.
Ranger is a young wolf with special powers whose pack gets killed by hunters. Ranger gets adopted into the pack of his future best friend Alexi. Here, he learns to hone his skills from the old wolf wizard Morpheus. When humans start to take over the wolf territory in order to mine, Ranger will have to use his powers to save the day.
This was a book which I did enjoy, but also think objectively just is not very good. It isn't too bad or anything, it's got a few good aspects about it. But it's also that good. It's just kind of in that awkward mediocre middle. But I did enjoy it.
One of the highlights for me personally was the friendships between Ranger and Alexi, and Ranger and Morpheus. Alexi is Ranger's best friend from the day the duo meets and it's just really nice to see them constantly together and by each other's side. It's a very loyal friendship from both sides and it's just nice. It could honestly even be read as a romantic relationship, though I don't think that is the author's intention here. But I do like this reading.
Meanwhile the relationship between Morpheus and Ranger is more that of a mentor-protégé or parent-offspring. But they are still very close and even if they're not always on the same page, it's still nice to see their growing bond and how they play off of one another. Morpheus is the only other known wolf wizard in this book, so on that principle alone his bond with Ranger is pretty interesting as they both have magic but don't always agree on how they want to use it.
Meanwhile the other characters are just kind of fine, honestly. Nothing great. There is one wolf called Gaylord (hilarious name, by the way) and another called Minda who are basically Alexi's and Ranger's closest other friends/siblings. There's also a human boy named Elvin whom Ranger befriends and their friendship was nice, but it did feel kind of like a generic friendship and I personally thought their bond didn't come across as strongly as the book wanted me to make me believe it is. I thought the friendship between Alexi and Ranger was written much better.
What does annoy me about the book is that it often feels repetitious. Certain lines of dialogues will be repeated more often than needed, and sometimes it even feels like entire scenes get repeated (e.g Morpheus and Ranger discussing using their powers to alter the weather or create an earthquake). This was a bit annoying to read.
Another thing that wolves will often use terminology that they shouldn't be familiar with, such as miles or hours. That took me out of the story.
Also this book is...kinda lowkey sexist? Sure, it's not overly so at a first glance, but upon closer inspection it just kinda is. There is a huge cast and pretty much all of the characters are male except for Minda and the pack's leading female (forgot her name). The leading female is in it so little she barely feels like a character, and Minda is...just there. She feels like the token girl of the group, but she doesn't do anything of note except get injured once and she doesn't really have an arc.
Even Gaylord, a side character on about the same level as page-presence as Minda, gets an arc. Minda meanwhile is just kind of there along for the ride, but she's never really doing anything noteworthy. She doesn't even really have much of a personality or arc or anything. The book keeps insisting that she's smart, but it never really shows this. It's pretty much all tell and no show. So we get only one female character of note in this book, and she contributes very little. Which just feels like a shame. And again there's the trope of killing of female characters for male characters' developments (e.g. Elvin and Ranger's mothers). So this book didn't do a very good job at handling its female characters.
The villains are also pretty darn standard and nothing really to write home about. The "evil hunter/greedy person who wants to kill nature and make a profit" type of tropes. I guess Bezee is the lesser of the two, but the main villain is just kind of a "mean destructive hunter" stereotype and doesn't feel much like of an actual character.
But that said, I did enjoy myself a bit reading this book. No, it's not great, but I had a pretty good time still. It's just objectively not great.
Rating: 3.25/5
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