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A review by skylacine
Wolves of the Shadowlands by Matthew Manyak
3.0
Bullet review:
+Plot was pretty interesting and kept me engaged enough.
+Despite me not being too fond of the human-POV chapters, they were relatively fine. Ahoté isn't a terrible character or anything.
+I liked Ek'toph and Kiaza.
-Despite being the main character, Ukita isn't all that interesting as a protagonist. He starts out the story pretty much the same as he leaves it. He starts out believing humans aren't evil, and then he proves to be right in his assessment and that's just kind of it. He does have a minute arc of growing into his leadership role more, but even that is pretty minor as he is pretty leader-like from the start. So he's not a super interesting or three-dimensional main character. He doesn't really change or learn anything new throughout the book.
-Sigh, yeah, the sexism. This book basically has only two relevant female characters (Tala and Eirlys) and they only exist to be accessories to the male characters. They don't really have their own personality or goals or arcs or anything (aside from the very simple "learn to trust humans/wolves more" everyone but Ukita/Ahoté goes through). The other female characters are generally not named and they also aren't really allowed by the males to participate in pack/tribe life. The females are repeatedly mentioned pretty much only in association of taking care of the pups, when the males do all the tracking/hunting/fighting/patrolling/leading. And this status quo is never challenged, either. So like, yeah, the writing of the female characters of this book isn't great. All other characters of note are all male and they have more going on than Tala and Eirlys.
It's not a terrible book or anything but I'd still skip this one, there's better wolf xenofiction out there.
+Plot was pretty interesting and kept me engaged enough.
+Despite me not being too fond of the human-POV chapters, they were relatively fine. Ahoté isn't a terrible character or anything.
+I liked Ek'toph and Kiaza.
-Despite being the main character, Ukita isn't all that interesting as a protagonist. He starts out the story pretty much the same as he leaves it. He starts out believing humans aren't evil, and then he proves to be right in his assessment and that's just kind of it. He does have a minute arc of growing into his leadership role more, but even that is pretty minor as he is pretty leader-like from the start. So he's not a super interesting or three-dimensional main character. He doesn't really change or learn anything new throughout the book.
-Sigh, yeah, the sexism. This book basically has only two relevant female characters (Tala and Eirlys) and they only exist to be accessories to the male characters. They don't really have their own personality or goals or arcs or anything (aside from the very simple "learn to trust humans/wolves more" everyone but Ukita/Ahoté goes through). The other female characters are generally not named and they also aren't really allowed by the males to participate in pack/tribe life. The females are repeatedly mentioned pretty much only in association of taking care of the pups, when the males do all the tracking/hunting/fighting/patrolling/leading. And this status quo is never challenged, either. So like, yeah, the writing of the female characters of this book isn't great. All other characters of note are all male and they have more going on than Tala and Eirlys.
It's not a terrible book or anything but I'd still skip this one, there's better wolf xenofiction out there.