Born with one blue eye and one green, Eyulf was abandoned by his pack as an infant and has never understood why, or what he is...
Varya is fiercely loyal to the Great North Pack, which took her in when she was a teenager. While out on patrol, Varya finds Eyulf wounded and starving and saves his life, at great risk to her own.
With old and new enemies threatening the Great North, Varya knows as soon as she sees his eyes that she must keep Eyulf hidden away from the superstitious wolves who would doom them both. Until the day they must fight to the death for the Pack's survival, side by side and heart to heart...
Comment: It's been three years since I've read the second installment in the Legend of All Wolves series by author Maria Vale. This is the third and while there wasn't a lot of specifics I remembered, I had an enough general idea to simply follow what was going on.
In this third story, the protagonist is Varya, who came from a decimated pack, to the order of the Great North., which made her feel confident in her position. Varya isn't alpha but her "shielder" duties practically make her so. One day Varya finds a lone wolf hidden in a den and helps treating his wounds, which happens often enough they slowly start talking and his story is as heartbreaking as Varya's. However, she knows he would never be accepted by the Pack and keeps his identity a secret. In the meantime, their enemy Augustus Levereaux is upping the tactics to take control of his grandchildren and, ultimately, of the Pack too. When things reach an impossible point, Varya decides to act, but what kind of price will that require...?
For those who aren't familiar with this series, in this world mrs Vale has created, wolves are able to turn human but they aren't human. This is a very important distinction because while we, the reader, recognize human like traits and expectations, the characters are more often guided by their animal instincts even if/when they show those human features too, such as the feelings and emotions behind many decisions.
This said, the first two installments offered an interesting but flawed world and my biggest issue was that the fine balance between the wolves' instincts and their "humanity" wasn't obvious enough and I've finished both books with the sense that something more should have been included, as elusive as it sounds now. Well, in this book protagonist Varya is considered a distant, kind of aloof wolf and we must glimpse her "human" side by her decisions and how she adapts her reactions to the situations taking place,as well as her caring for the other wolf she knows the Pack will not accept.
I think the wold dynamics and lore were established well enough. The author doesn't info dump but the narrators (always in first person) give the reader enough to understand how the Pack works, how is organized and who is who in all the hierarchies. There's a lot of imagination but also a lot of academic information mixed up to make this world a fantasy but close enough to reality. And credibility, consistency in how the characters act and behave in this world.
This means that, while we wish these stories to be romances, and having romantic elements, the base of the main story line isn't one. I'll say that, personally, that is how I still see it in part; once a romance reader, if the element is there, there's no way to ignore it. However, this book is definitely not a romance and not only because protagonist Varya doesn't start an obvious relationship with her ill wolf, Eyulf. The intention and the drive of the characters isn't romance oriented, everyone has other concerns and their state of mind doesn't see the romanticism of it, even between mates.
All this to say that while I liked the story, while I've felt engrossed in the characters' lives and their dynamics and I've liked Varya more and more as the plot developed, I still feel incredibly frustrated and annoyed at the end of the book. The author chose a path for Varya and Eyulf that feels so... unnecessary. As if the choice was a matter of stating a point, of using a tool to originate a reaction in the reader, as if it had to be a karmic/whimsical kind of situation, when it wasn't that necessary in the big scheme of things. I feel so terribly annoyed... but I can see why some readers found it to be poetic.
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