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The Loki Sword (Fireborn #3)
The Loki Sword (Fireborn #3)
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I'm not sure why, but for some reason I haven't really connected with Angus Donald's 'Fire Born' novels, finding them to be the weakest of his three series that I have read (The Outlaw Chronicles and the Holcroft Blood series).

I don't know why that is; it's just one of those things.

However, I'll still read these novels, just not be in as much of a rush to do so as with the others.

This is the third in his FireBorn series (after both The Last Berserker: An action-packed Viking adventure and The Saxon Wolf: A Viking epic of berserkers and battle) and is also, for my money, the best of those three novels. That may be because of the nature of this - a band of travellers setting out on a quest, leading to a battle and a return home, with the author himself admitting the influence of the works of JRR Tolkien on this particular entry.
  
The Silver Wolf
The Silver Wolf
J. C. Harvey | 2022 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
This is a new period of history to me, and I loved learning about it and following the adventures of Jack (or Jag) Fiskardo.

The Thirty Years War appeared to me to be a period where everyone was fighting everyone else in Europe. Jack’s father is caught up in all this and is killed, swiftly followed by the apparent suicide of his mother. Jack flees, knowing that he has to get away, carrying a silver medal with a wolf on it.

Jack has a habit of falling on his feet, and then getting into trouble of one kind or another - so he doesn’t stay in any one place for long. In this book, he starts off in France, then on to Amsterdam, and then Germany.

It’s an intriguing, exciting book, and really readable. The ending has ensured that I’ll most definitely look out for the second book in this trilogy.

Many thanks to The Pigeonhole and J. C. Harvey for reading along.
  
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Hazel (1853 KP) rated The Wolf Road in Books

Dec 14, 2018  
TW
The Wolf Road
Beth Lewis | 2016
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
3.5 Stars

<i>I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.</i>

“Any lie can turn into the truth if you believe it long enough.” <i>The Wolf Road</i> is the debut literary thriller by British author Beth Lewis. The post-apocalyptic world is not a very safe place to be, especially for a seven year old during a fierce and dangerous storm. Lost in the woods, a young girl comes across a man who, after naming her Elka, gives her a place to stay for the next ten years of her life. During this time he teaches her how to trap animals, use hunting knives and move silently between the trees – all the vital things needed to survive in the wild. For a long time Elka views this man as a father figure, but on discovering that her beloved Daddy is a serial killer, she realizes she has been living a life of lies.

Desperate to get away from the horrifying realization, Elka runs off deep into the forest with only a hunting knife and the clothes on her back. With nowhere to go, she decides to try and find her birth parents, but although she can easily survive in the wild, she is completely unprepared for the human world. With a childlike innocence, Elka finds herself in trouble on numerous occasions, only feeling at ease once she is back in the woods living the life of wolves. However she soon realizes that she will never be safe no matter how far she travels – not until that murderer is dead himself.

Once you get used to Elka’s colourful dialect, the gripping narrative pulls us into a world with danger around every corner. Elka’s revelation at the beginning of the book seems like a small issue compared with all the trouble she finds herself in later on. The reader will sympathize with Elka as she discovers the evils of man, and admire her strength as well as the development of a conscience after meeting and making her first ever friend. But whilst Elka learns how to walk amongst humans, there is a foreboding sense of doom as evilness keeps her within its sights.

<i>The Wolf Road</i> is a great post-apocalyptic story with a strong protagonist. At times it takes on a similar theme to a western novel, with guns, gold mining, and violence; but it is essentially a thriller built up of lies that are gradually unpicked. There is no psychological element to the book, thus nothing to try and work out for yourself. You simply need to read and discover what happens. As a result this book is the kind you will either love or hate. Some people may find it disturbing or gruesome, whereas others may find it exciting and enjoy reading about the unique main character.

Personally I think <i>The Wolf Road</i> is a great, original piece of work, and it only loses stars because I found a few parts a bit too grisly. Beth Lewis writes well and it cannot have been easy to keep the dialect up for the entire novel. This is an author who definitely has promise for the future.
  
Linger (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #2)
Linger (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #2)
Maggie Stiefvater | 2011 | Young Adult (YA)
8
8.3 (9 Ratings)
Book Rating
This book picks up where Shiver (Wolves of Mercy Falls) left off, with Sam supposedly healed. One of the new wolves is introduced as a point of view in the book, Cole, who casts an intriguing element into the plot-line as he has a completely different perspective on being a wolf than Sam does. Cole is a contradiction in other ways as well, as he is a druggie rock star wanting to escape life who also happens to possess a genius intellect thanks to a scientist father. He has immediate chemistry with Isabel, too. At first I was baffled by this pairing, but based on personality and intellect, these two mesh well.
Isabel also features heavily in this book. Even though she has attitude to spare, I rather like her, both for her sarcasm and for her brains. Sam and Grace never really seem too curious about the science and mechanics behind the wolf-human changes, but neither Isabel nor Cole can stop obsessing over it, though for different reasons.
As for Grace, now it's her turn to be the focus as she gets sicker and sicker, living in denial of what this illness relates to. Her and Sam both seem to have the mindset that if one ignores the problem, it will just disappear. I never liked that sort of approach - it seems cowardly. Really, their "epic romance" would just be another tragedy if it were not for the practicality of their friends, Isabel and Cole. In the case of this series, the lesser characters seem to carry the plot instead.
As for Sam, I found I enjoyed his random song lyrics and poems most of all. They lent a certain lyrical element to the book and added in the strength of emotion to pull me into the plot. Though poetry is not always the easiest thing to understand, his few simple lines interspersed throughout the text conveyed much more of what the characters were experiencing than a lengthy description could. I look forward to the conclusion of the series, Forever (Wolves of Mercy Falls, Book 3).