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Review
of Wolf's-own, Book One: Ghost
and
Wolf's-own, Book Two: Weregild
by Cole Riann @ The Armchair Reader
Original URL
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Rating:
LOVED IT!!!!!!! (5 stars)
REVIEW
Oh Carole! What are
you doing to me!?
I remember when I
read Aisling, Carole’s first published series, how
amazing she was at characterization, especially in creating a
tragic hero. Here, with Fen Jacin-Rei she created an even more
tragic one, with deeper motivations and a fuzzier moral compass.
Even though I love the true works of art she creates, I still
felt blown away finishing the first two books of this series,
which are really one complete story (just as 3 and 4 are the
same). And the most amazing thing about it is how humble Carole
is, like I wasn’t reading this book with a sense of awe at the
worlds and characters she creates, that just seem so… fluid, so
thoroughly settled in their world. All of the books she writes
are about characters that bring the world to life around them,
instead of a unique world that tells us about the people in it.
That direction toward characters and allowing them their room to
grow, to fall in love (or not) make this not a romance, but a
study of characters that happen to be in a fantasy world and
happen to fall in love, in their own way. That truly baffles me,
how she’s able to do that and it all comes across the page so
easily. I swear, I’ll never get tired of reading her work.
Okay, now that my
gushing is over I’ll try to get on to a bit about the story (I
could talk all day — in fact I could analyze the shit
out of this like I really want to but I know you all don’t want
to sit here and end up reading a dissertation, nor should you,
that would take away the mystery).
Ghost
and Weregild are set in the land of Ada, whose native
residents, the Adan, have subjugated the race of the Jin for
fear of their magic and annexed the country of Jejin into their
own. Now the Jin are a dwindling race living in internment camps
and periodically raided for those hiding magic. Those with magic
are Disappeared. The Jin before the war that brought them down
were ruled by their Ancestors — spirits of those that came
before them who were themselves descended from gods. When the
magic of the Jin and land of the Jejin was breached, the
Ancestors went mad, and the once revered Jin who could hear
their voices — the “Untouchables” — went mad with them from
having the raving collected voices in their minds. Tradition
among the Jin, and the Adan who before the war had intermarried
with them and their customs, held that the Untouchables still
couldn’t be touched, for who could say they knew the wisdom of
the ancestors and by touching one might alter the path that was
already set in motion? So over a hundred years after the war, no
one may alter the course of an Untouchable, even if that raving
Untouchable were beating you in the street, you would not lift a
finger to defend yourself.
However, there are
those that would alter the fate of an Untouchable, so
cruelly nicknamed Ghosts. A family who would shelter one, or
someone who might harness the power of one. Because the war
between the Jin and Adan upset the balance of the gods, and the
agents who work for them, the Temshiel and the Maijin,
serve to reset that balance, and curry favor for themselves in
the balancing, even though the gods themselves are fickle,
sometimes quiet, and seemingly always at war among each other.
Like pieces on a chessboard, the Temshiel and the
Maijin can only move in the way their gods command them, and
they each serve different ones. For a Ghost placed among such
mass manipulation, can there even be free will, even for one
supposed to heed the wisdom of now raving spirits?
Well, you can see
from that long, yet still very superficial setup that this story
contains circles within circles. The characters all have to make
difficult choices because there are no good ones. There are so
many hands fighting for control of Fen, the Ghost at the fulcrum
of the near future machinations of the gods, and even the ones
that would seem good and caring have their own agenda. It is a
harsh, cruel world, where punishment against ones gods means
going to the suns and never being reborn. It is a world where
there is no “fair”, no matter how much Fen might dream of it,
because the gods themselves are not fair, and they as agents are
consequences of the gods.
I want to talk a bit
about the characters, while I’m talking about how sad their
prospects are. We have Fen Jacin-Rei of course, known by
different names by different people. Fen is the product of his
making and of subtle and deliberate manipulation from the Ultimate
Aantagonist (because he is). The outside
stoicism and underlying barely-held strength Fen has in the face
of so much impossibility he’s expected to make possible is
heartbreaking, especially in the light of everything we slowly
learn he’s been through. Every revelation nearly broke my heart,
and even though it has forged him into a weapon which could
easily be just as soul-damningly terrifying as stunningly
heroic, that fine edge of uncertainty allows his fortitude to
shine through. Then there is Malick — of questionable background
and leader of a rag-tag group of assassins (Samin, who I LOVE,
Shig and Yori). It takes the better part of both books to
understand his true purpose, as it does for him to understand it
as well. Yet, for someone who perhaps shows the world a person
of questionable morality and often ruthlessness, is quite
piercingly idealistic himself. The natures Fen and Malick show
the world around them are startlingly different, and their
façades immediately repel the other. It makes for a delicious
friction between the two, both professionally and romantically.
The rest of the group are all so much more than secondary
characters, many full characters with offered POV themselves. I
have so little time to talk about them, but in particular I
loved Samin, as well as Joori, though I really did love them all
in their own way. I don’t see how you couldn’t.
I see so much growth
in Carole’s writing from Aisling to Wolf’s-own.
There is a noticeable shift into a more adult mindset from that
series to this one. I see how, when I didn’t understand before,
just why Aisling was a YA series, if only in the room
that shift allowed her characters to grow — a subtle shift from
innocence against the world to a jaded kind of innocence
still fighting for survival. It has little to do with sex,
or romance of any kind, but more I think with a different
mindset from the characters (not maturity, per se, but maybe
life experience). That shift really allows the story to follow
its natural progression, a story which from the outset dealt
with a somewhat harsher slice of life, just like as with age and
wisdom choices become muddled without the stark black and white
surety we have with youth. These characters look upon their
situation with adult eyes, which makes their choices much more
difficult. I don’t think that this story would have been
successful if Carole hadn’t been able to make that shift, which
for me, was one of the biggest growths I saw in the writing.
The first book,
Ghost, is told in a very specific format of flashbacks. I
normally abhor flashbacks. My little brain just can’t
take all the back and forth sometimes. But I think I realized
reading Ghost, that that wasn’t the case at all. What I
can’t take are flashbacks that don’t serve a larger purpose,
because I had no problem with these. They allow Carole to play
with the delivery of information. To all of you who have ever
read these books or the Aisling books, you know that
this author isn’t one to give information to the reader idly —
we have to work for it. The addition of flashbacks in a book
that deals the most setup of the story means that we, the
reader, are privy to certain bits of information before the
characters. Most, of course, is still in Carole’s hands to be
doled to us in precise fashion, but I liked the back and forth
play that made me as a reader take a more active role in the
story. I think that you might need to finish the first two books
(to get a complete story) before you realize that, which is why
I don’t necessarily blame anyone who bemoans the use of
flashbacks, but I could see that they are there for a very
specific reason and that they serve their purposes.
Lastly, I think there
is something that needs to be said about the direction we
approach this series as readers. They might be released from
Dreamspinner Press, a publisher that we all know for publishing
m/m romance. But, I think it is a fault of our own if we don’t
approach this story with an open mind, and since that’s hardly
the fault of readers, since most of us come from that community
who read these books, I really think that everyone should know
they’re in for an epic fantasy with some romance underneath,
instead of a romance that deals in fantasy. There is a huge
difference, and I’m not sure that if I didn’t understand that
distinction if I would really appreciate these books the way
they should be.
I really think that
Carole has one-upped herself when I didn’t know if she could. I
think everyone should read these, but then again, no story is
for everyone. You really have to think with Carole’s writing —
you cannot be an idle reader. And you have to have some
patience. The story unfolds in its own way, and at an unhurried
pace.
PS. I cried. No… I
CRIED. But it was so worth it!
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