Book Review: The Tempering of Men
To start off-OMG, thank you, melusinahp, for the adorable little panda! Really made my day, and now my profile is totally cute. <3
And now to the review: I finished The Tempering of Men by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, the sequel to A Companion to Wolves (which I reviewed here) and the middle book in the trilogy (the third hasn’t been released yet).
[Review with some possible spoilers]
I have to express my disappointment because while it was a good book, it wasn’t nearly as fun as the first one. First of all, I don’t think there was nearly as much explicit sex in the novel, maybe just two scenes total-which, considering how much sex there was in the first one, is quite the drop! Since I’m kind of in this series for the desperate bonding-heat sex scenes, not having much onscreen makes me rather sad.
The writers have also suddenly dropped Isolfr’s perspective and taken up three new ones: his two wolfjarls (Skaldwulf and Vethulf) and his friend/protégé, Brokkolfr (who is the brother of a female wolf, like Isolfr). This disappoints me because I adore Isolfr and being inside his head, with all his insecurities and contractions. And while I vaguely know Skaldwulf (who looks like a young Snape in my mind), the other two felt completely new to me.
Worse still, there was hardly any OT3 goodness between Skaldwulf, Vethulf, and Isolfr (and certainly none in the bedroom), largely because they were separated for much of the novel. It’s like the authors have set up this wonderful playground with all these cool elements but then won’t play in it yet. Perhaps they’re just setting up for the third book, but as a reader I found it frustrating.
This is not to say it’s a bad book; I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the first. The book serves mostly to answer the question: now that [mild spoiler if you haven’t read the first book:] the trolls are mostly wiped out, is there any point to having the wolfhealls?
In order to answer that question, the authors expand the universe in the form of world-building, and they do that very well: we learn more about the elf-like cave-dwelling svartalfar, as well as new human races in the forms of the Rheans (read: Roman Empire equilavent) and Brythoni (read: Britton equilavent) to counter the Scandinavian-equilavent wolfcarls. And we discover actual libraries! I was wondering how the cultures stored knowledge.
My favorite new character was Fargrimr, who is a “sworn-son,” i.e. a girl raised as a boy because his father had no male heirs; he takes the male pronouns, and it is understood that in everything but biology, he is a male. I was very impressed by the authors’ treatment of this transgender character and found him to be lots of fun with his confidence and wry sense of humor.
Despite my disappointment, though, I’m still desperate for the next installment. I just hope it will have more Isolfr and OT3-ness. :)
And now to the review: I finished The Tempering of Men by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, the sequel to A Companion to Wolves (which I reviewed here) and the middle book in the trilogy (the third hasn’t been released yet).
[Review with some possible spoilers]
I have to express my disappointment because while it was a good book, it wasn’t nearly as fun as the first one. First of all, I don’t think there was nearly as much explicit sex in the novel, maybe just two scenes total-which, considering how much sex there was in the first one, is quite the drop! Since I’m kind of in this series for the desperate bonding-heat sex scenes, not having much onscreen makes me rather sad.
The writers have also suddenly dropped Isolfr’s perspective and taken up three new ones: his two wolfjarls (Skaldwulf and Vethulf) and his friend/protégé, Brokkolfr (who is the brother of a female wolf, like Isolfr). This disappoints me because I adore Isolfr and being inside his head, with all his insecurities and contractions. And while I vaguely know Skaldwulf (who looks like a young Snape in my mind), the other two felt completely new to me.
Worse still, there was hardly any OT3 goodness between Skaldwulf, Vethulf, and Isolfr (and certainly none in the bedroom), largely because they were separated for much of the novel. It’s like the authors have set up this wonderful playground with all these cool elements but then won’t play in it yet. Perhaps they’re just setting up for the third book, but as a reader I found it frustrating.
This is not to say it’s a bad book; I just didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the first. The book serves mostly to answer the question: now that [mild spoiler if you haven’t read the first book:] the trolls are mostly wiped out, is there any point to having the wolfhealls?
In order to answer that question, the authors expand the universe in the form of world-building, and they do that very well: we learn more about the elf-like cave-dwelling svartalfar, as well as new human races in the forms of the Rheans (read: Roman Empire equilavent) and Brythoni (read: Britton equilavent) to counter the Scandinavian-equilavent wolfcarls. And we discover actual libraries! I was wondering how the cultures stored knowledge.
My favorite new character was Fargrimr, who is a “sworn-son,” i.e. a girl raised as a boy because his father had no male heirs; he takes the male pronouns, and it is understood that in everything but biology, he is a male. I was very impressed by the authors’ treatment of this transgender character and found him to be lots of fun with his confidence and wry sense of humor.
Despite my disappointment, though, I’m still desperate for the next installment. I just hope it will have more Isolfr and OT3-ness. :)