Book Review: A Wolf Called Fire by Rosanne Parry

 

I had mixed thoughts on A Wolf Called Wander, but wanted to check this one out regardless. Spoilers ahead.

Warm is a wolf who gets separated from most of his pack and is left with a bunch of half-grown pups to look after. Now, he has to teach them how to survive, while he also hopes to reunite with the rest of his kin. However, a pack of white wolves is hunting him and his family. 

I guess this was an okay book, but similar to Wander it didn't do much for me. I do think the concept of basing a xenofiction around a real-life wolf is cool and this wasn't a terrible book by any means, but it also just felt a bit, I don't know, bland and stale.

I've by now read so many wolf xenofiction books about an underdog-type wolf character (usually male) who ends up slowly rising to power and becoming a hero and possibly a leader over the course of the story. And after having read so many of those, they more and more start to blend together in my head. And this book just does so little to set itself apart from those other books.

Warm is a very generic hero, not particularly interesting and doesn't really stand out. He doesn't have a very strong personality, and honestly neither did a lot of the other characters if you ask me. I honestly think Snow is the most interesting and had the most development, but she's merely a side character. The main lead and his family are just not so interesting to me. They're all just pretty generic nice do-gooders.

The story, while claiming to be based on the life of wolf Eight, also takes a lot of liberties, so honestly I kinda wish they stuck closer to the real-life tale. Of course some stuff was going to be fictionalized, but I honestly didn't clue in that this is supposed to be about Eight (a wolf I have read a lot about before) until the author mentions it in the afterword. 

I also thought something about the narrative voice was just kind of off-putting and I didn't feel like the story and sentences flowed very well. I can't quite pinpoint why this is, maybe it's the fact that that the sentences tend to be rather short? Either way, the book just didn't read pleasantly because of the author's writing voice.

I don't think this is a terrible book or anything and if you just want to read some wolf xenofiction, this is a fine book. But for me the narrative voice and the bland characters were just not it.

Rating: 3/5