Book Review: Cliff of Shadows by Tymofiy Antonov (Dawnmist: Spirits and Shadows #1)

 

Another wolf xenofiction I randomly came across one day, instantly bought, and instantly read. Spoilers ahead.

Luna is a lone wolf who grew up alone. When one day she receives a message from a powerful wolf spirit, she decides to join a Pack, DawnPack. Here she must now learn to fit in, which is difficult because Pack wolves seem to hate loners. When a drought strikes and both DawnPack and the neighboring MistPack might die of dehydration, Luna and a few of her fellow Pack-wolves go on a quest to find the source of what is blocking the water.

I loved this book! I genuinely enjoyed the story and characters and had a great time with it. I do need to preface this review by stating the obvious: Yes, this book does take clear inspiration from the Warriors book series by Erin Hunter (I mean, the ranking system is just beat for beat that of Warriors but with different titles). But that isn't a bad thing, in fact I enjoy those books, and my own writing was inspired by them as well. But I do feel the need to state this so ya'll know this going in.

But man, this book is just genuinely great. We have an engaging plot (the mystery of what is blocking the water + Luna trying to find her place as a Pack wolf) which kept me hooked throughout. The characters are, granted, not the most amazing three-dimensional bunch I've ever seen, but they're all still solid. They do have clear personalities and traits and some are pretty well-developed, some more than others. I think some of my favorites would have to be Cypress, Canyon, Ice and Blaze. And Twinkle, of course!

If I do have to pick a nitpick, I guess that I don't like that there's kiiind of an unfortunate implication that Luna is the product of incest. I don't think this is what the author intended, but when you look at the situation (Luna being a seer and a violet-eyed black wolf being only possible if two wolves of this exact same phenotype came together. And this phenotype being very rare on an isolated island) it does kinda have its implications. I feel that this could've been resolved by either making violet-eyed black wolves less of a rarity, changing the setting from an island to a larger land mass, or just getting rid of the whole "we need two violet-eyed black wolves to produce a seer" rule.

I do also have to bring up that there are a few formatting errors in this book, but it's pretty minor and only in the early chapters.  

But, again this, is a nitpick and I do admit that. Aside from that I had a good time with this book. It had a good story and characters and a lot of good LGBT+ representation to boot.

Rating: 4/5