Book #44 of 2016: Waer

[thistlechaser]

Waer by Meg Caddy
Rating: Loved (Hated-Disliked-Okay-Liked-Loved)



Awful, awful cover, great story.

Set on some fantasy (yet sort of Earth-like) world, the story's POV switches between two main characters. Lowell, who was born a "waer" (werewolf), and Lycaea, who was made one against her will as a punishment. Lowell's peaceful life is shattered when the neighboring evil nation invades, throwing him and Lycaea together.

There were soooooo many good things about this book:
- Lycaea's journey through the story to accept herself. No character development felt forced, they all took their time to grow and it felt perfectly natural and realistic.
- The relationship -- this book reminded me that I don't hate relationships in books, I just hate badly written ones.
- The worldsetting -- we visited so many different places, met so many different people, and I loved them all.
- The twist, which I can't describe at all, but once it came to light I immediately wanted to go back and start reading the book from the beginning again in light of that new information. :D

The things I didn't like were minor:
- Some of the names were too reflective of the characters. The bad guy was named Daemon (demon), the female waer was named Lycaes (Lycan -- werewolf).
- The accents of the people of the story's various nations were RL ones (Welsh, Australian, British), and that kind of knocked me out of the story a bit.

But all in all, this was a wonderful story. The author stated that she was working on it for 10 years, and I believe it. I'm so in love with her. Her reason for writing about werewolves:

My reason for writing about werewolves is distressingly nerdy. During high school my best friend Jenn and I had an elaborate two-person live-action-roleplay going on. We only spoke to each other in character for about a year. While I was still figuring out my character, Jenn passed me a note in class that read ‘the werewolves are in danger’. After that, my character (Lycaea, in her earliest form) was a werewolf and I started to develop her backstory, which ended up being Waer.

She seems like someone I'd really enjoy knowing.

Comments

[bacchuslives.livejournal.com]

Cool - It's nice to see a great one pop in once and a while :)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I very much feel the same!

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

I might give this one a try, based on your praise! For some reason even though I like animal stories, and fantasy, I've never really gotten into the werewolf trope. My brain lumps it with vampires and zombies, which I've usually disliked. But in recent years I found a few vampire books I did enjoy, so maybe there are some werewolf ones I'd like too...

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this one isn't a traditional werewolf book at all. It makes them more natural, more like animals (and more like people, too). It's just a part of what they are, as a people. I really enjoyed it.

The author said she based it on real wolves, which really act nothing like traditional werewolves, and that came through in the story.

Hope you like it too, if you do pick it up!