A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
Title: A Companion to Wolves
Author: Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
Type: Male slash, fantasy, adventure
Length: 304 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Back of the Book: In a culture in which villages are protected by men bonded to giant telepathic wolves that constitute the key line of defense against trolls, who come from the north and leave devastation in their wake, those wolf-brethren are respected-and used as bogeys to scare misbehaving children. Njall, a jarl's son and heir, is chosen to fill his family's duty to the wolfheall. He goes, despite his father's disapproval, because the wolfheall is the only thing standing between his people and death. Chosen by a trellwolf bitch, he enters into the strange, brutal, ultimately fascinating world of the wolf-brethren.
But before I get to that. I liked this story because it wasn't a mushy gushy romance. In fact the romance factor was down played and not even really featured through most of the story. That was a nice change, to have it there but not the focus really. This isn't a story about a relationship between two people but about a whole group. It is the story of a pack and pack relationships, brothers and sisters. I also enjoyed the fact that, this book didn't shy away from female characters. A lot of male slash books tend to focus on men with maybe a token female character, or sister or something like that. While this story focuses a male dominated world, it does not stay strictly within those lines especially towards the end.
The violence both physical and sexual was handled well. It was not over done but nor was it under cut by leaving it out or simply alluding to it. I think a lot of authors hurt their works by going too far one way or the other. Including too much or making too much of the violence and the rape or simply not making enough of it. There was in my opinion a good balance in here.
My biggest issue with the book was the incredible influx of names, from beginning to end. It was hard to keep them all straight especially at the start. To the point that I wasn't sure who was trellwolf and who was wolfcarl half the time. This does get somewhat easier to deal with as you get used to the main characters who appear. However, the similarity of characters names often confuses things a bit.
Despite this I enjoyed the story with it's grounding in Norse mythology. I felt that, that lent a grounding to the world and the world around it. At least for me though I won't claim a great knowledge of Norse mythos.
I don't know if there will be any more of this, though it ends with that possibility. I would be interested to see what takes place. However getting back into the flow of the names and characters would not be overly easy by the time something else appears. Cheers. *poofs*