I Want To Howl At The Moon...
With October on
the horizon, I’ve been catching up on my monster lore. Rather than feeding my vampire fetish,
I’ve been sticking with wolves lately.
I finally finished up the Maggie Stiefvater trilogy about wolves and bit
into Andrea Cremer’s second book in the Nightshade series, Wolfsbane. Both were excellent and completely
different takes on the werewolf myth
In Andrea Cremer’s
world of wolves, evil and good spring from legends, myths, and magic deigned
from messing with nature. Calla is
an alpha wolf born into her right to lead as a part of a natural world filled
with magic and legend. She struggles between her feelings for Ren and her old life and the choices she's made in following her heart. She's faced with new facts and must decipher what is true -- the evidence before her or what she has been brought up to believe. Quotes
about virtue and vice and uncertainty are used to reflect Calla’s own turmoil
in trying to decide who she is and what is the right path for her and her pack. In this second book about the
Nightshade wolves, more is revealed about the nature of Cremer’s breed of
werewolves and the line between good and evil becomes even more confusing. It is filled with adventure, romance,
and promises of a very exciting conclusion in Bloodrose, the third book still
to come.
Maggie Stiefvater
delivers a completely different world of wolves in her trilogy starting with
Shiver, moving on to Linger, and ending with Forever. Sam and Grace have one of the most beautiful and poetic teen
romances of all time. Stiefvater
writes of shy Sam sitting in the woods waiting for Grace and romantics weep at
the image. We all know a Grace who
has been left to raise herself and is in essence 25-years-old by the time she
is physically 15. Sam and Grace
are those old souls we know brought together and romantically linked. Do we want every teen to be a Sam and
Grace? No. But we cheer for Sam and Grace. They are a modern day Romeo and
Juliette, Katherine and Heathcliff, Harry and Sally…
The wolves in
Stiefvater’s story have contracted a virus that causes them to turn into wolves
every winter and humans as the weather warms into spring. Eventually they stay wolf. As the story progresses, Sam finds a
cure by contracting meningitis and is able to stay human. Alas, Grace, who was bitten by a wolf
as a child begins to bleed uncontrollably and the only way to stop it is a wolf
bite thus turning her into a wolf.
Stiefvater’s theory is an interesting one, although at one point she
compares it to malaria, something I found a bit dodgy. Otherwise, I thought it was reasonably
interesting. I’d love to have my
brother’s take on it since he is much better at finding fault in diseases than
I am, him being an aficionado of picking apart House episodes for faulty
science.
Stiefvater has
another wonderful book coming out on October 18th. It’s called The Scorpio Races and is
about waterhorses. I picked up and
advanced reader copy at ALA and once I started reading it, couldn’t put it
down. This one may very well be a
contender for an award this year.
It is a wonderful story and incredibly well written. It’s told from various characters’
points of view, the main ones being Puck and Sean. They are on a very small island off the Irish coast and both
of them have been left orphaned because their parents were killed by a capall
uisce – water horse. Sean has been left raising horses for a meager wage using his gift with the animals while Puck and her brothers have struggled to maintain the family homestead. Typical of
Stiefvater’s style, this tale is almost lyrical in the way that it is
told. Her characters are strong
and steadfast and her animals are heady beasts at one with nature. This is a completely different story
than her wolf series, and yet still has that deep connection between animals
and humans, nature and descriptive elements that makes you feel a part of the
story. As much as I liked the wolf
series, I loved The Scorpio Races.
I don’t usually make a call on Printz contenders this early in the game,
but I think The Scorpio Races most definitely has the potential to be a strong
Printz contender, in addition to winning other book awards.
Book Trailer: The Scorpio Races
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