Got it?
Good, because that is a very important perspective that must be
understood, especially as I dive into what is undeniably a rambling, unfocused
review that says little about book plot and probably says more about my own
relationship with epic fantasy than anything else. Feel free to move along
knowing that as I said above, Black
Wolves is extraordinary and I cannot recommend it enough.
Still with me? Good.
The aspect of Black Wolves
that makes it so extraordinary (get used to this word, as I will keep using
it), is the scope of its ambition. Black
Wolves embraces the full history of epic fantasy, converses with it, moves
into interrogation, then subversion, and spits it back out as something new.
And this is done in every aspect of the book.
The beauty of this approach and the shear skill and will Elliott
wields to pull it all together makes for a reading experience more fulfilling than
any I can recall in recent years. For one thing – I literally had no real idea
of just where the story was going to go. There were too many options – I could
see a vast array of possibilities, and then Elliott would go in a different
direction, bring in a new reveal. It was absolute fun and entertainment – yes,
as I will discuss soon, this book has a lot of serious and important things
that it does, but that fun and entertainment is never lost. The reader is
cheering the characters, invested and rewarded. The dark, grim nastiness of the
book, it’s interrogation with more than just itself, but an entire genre and
those writing it today, are present without ever losing that critical enjoyment
of reading, the investiture of the fan. It’s a bloody brilliant maneuver to see
succeed.
Black Wolves takes on many of the most common thematic elements of epic fantasy
– colonialism, religion, role and execution of government, class system, war and
its consequences, violence, gender roles, racial/ethnic tensions, inspirations
from non-Western societies, and many more. Any one of these aspects could
become quite a lengthy discussion, along with a few that I didn’t mention.
Many reviews and discussions of Black Wolves have (rightly so) devoted time to discussing gender,
and to a lesser degree, age, aspects of the book. Black Wolves is full of strong women with agency, which is becoming
much more of the standard to achieve rather than an exception to the state of
genre, so I won’t focus on that too much (others have already done this and
much better than I can anyway). The aspect that I enjoyed and felt was more
fresh was the inclusion and focus on older characters. An aging, retired
spy/soldier and a Princess who has grown into a commanding role in a corps of
specialized soldiers who bond with and fly giant eagles (which, is really cool
in of and by itself). It’s rare for older characters to play more than an aging
sage, mentor, monarch, etc. – and when they do, it’s very often that they will
be killed off early in the series. So, it’s refreshing that arguably the two
most important characters in Black Wolves
are long past their youth. And I would certainly speculate that it takes an
author with a long history in the genre to make these characters work so well.
It’s also nice to see that every single character in this book has
its flaws – there simply isn’t anything universally likeable or unlikeable
about any of them. That is a difficult balance to pull off. But, I’m not going
to go into any detail of this beyond this mention that characters a fully
rounded people and never an encyclopedia entry.
As I’ve matured in my own reading journey through the years, I’ve
become far less focused on battles, world-building, and other such details of
fantasy books. Often what really gets me excited is fully developed political maneuvering
and all of the unpredictability that come from a multitude of intelligent,
motivated people all working to further their own interests within and beyond
the constraints the world places on them. In Black Wolves we have all that through a King, his wives, his sons
and daughters, and a few other, more mysterious groups. Throw in the
cultural/colonial appropriation and re-write of history and things get very
interesting indeed. As I said above, this creates a mystery and
unpredictability of the narrative that keeps tensions high, even as the book
drags a bit in the middle.
And this brings us to perhaps one of the most interesting aspects
of Black Wolves, one that occurred to
me much more in retrospect than while I was too busy simply enjoying the book:
change. Cultural change to be sure, but Black
Wolves is more than just an epic fantasy thriller wrapped around a period of
monumental cultural change. To a degree (in my opinion, a large degree), it’s a
meta commentary on the cultural change that the entire SFF field is going
through. And it’s brutally unapologetic in this interrogation as it revels the change
of today and those to come. Change is messy: it’s messy in Black Wolves, I suspect it’ll get messier in the sequels to come,
and cultural wars facing genre today, while overall moving things into a much
better place, are too often cruel, disheartening, disgusting, tortuous, as they
leave countless casualties in their wake. Black
Wolves is an answer of perseverance to all that. As I’ve hinted at above,
it takes an author who has been too often on the receiving end of a brutal
patriarchy for her entire career to seize the opportunity of this time and
celebrate the possibilities of the future, all the while shouting ‘Fuck You’ to
the haters. Bloody brilliant I say.
As I have now repeated said, Black
Wolves is an extraordinary epic fantasy that can be enjoyed on many different
levels. One does not have to see the meta interrogation of genre if one doesn’t
want to – it can be enjoyed as a great, fun book to read. And, one can enjoy it
for other reasons than I focused on in this review. This book is the real deal
and a shining example of what can be done. Simply put, the best thing I can say
in this review is: READ IT NOW!
And I figure I should get out a few final details that some may
find important and/or helpful. Black
Wolves is the first book in a planned trilogy. It is also set in the same
world, though many years after the events of the Crossroads Trilogy. Black
Wolves is the first book by Elliott that I’ve read (and it certainly won’t
be the last), so it can easily be enjoyed with no knowledge from the first
series, though I predict that knowledge from that series may enhance some
aspects of one’s enjoyment. Anyway, do not let this book pass you by.
Crossroads
Trilogy
Spirit Gate: Amazon
Shadow Gate: Amazon
Traitors Gate: Amazon
Black
Wolves Trilogy
Black Wolves: Amazon