Book #80 of 2024: Wolf Brother (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #1)

[thistlechaser]

Continuing reading current project: A book with a word in the title for each letter of the alphabet, checking my Kindle from oldest towards newer.

D: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. An omnibus with six books in it, the first being Wolf Brother.

Wolf Brother (Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #1) by Michelle Paver.

Quick synopsis: A boy with a destiny; from birth it was known he would save the world from a nearly immortal unstoppable demon. With the help of Wolf (a real wolf) and Renn (a girl who starts out an enemy and becomes a friend), Torak has to figure out how to defeat an unkillable demon bear.

Brief opinion: I first read this in 2004 (apparently I wasn't doing reviews yet, but I made mention of loving it in two different posts). I didn't like it as much 20 years later, but that could be because I've read so many of these "young boy with a wolf friend in prehistoric times" books since then.

Plot: Torak and his father live in the Forest (written with capital F through the book) away from all the clans. One day his father is attacked by the demon (in the body of a bear), makes Torak promise to stop the demon, then dies. 12 year old Torak is left on his own in the wilds.

He finds a wolf cub (which turns out to be his spirit guide). He's captured by one of the local clans, then a girl of that clan helps him and Wolf escape.

The three travel far, to a mountain of the spirits, to try to gain their help to end the demon bear.

Writing/editing: Story-wise the writing was great and clearly the author did a ton of research on this time period, but there were some grammar issues. Lots of semicolons used incorrectly, commas missing, and for some reason "forever" was always written as two words: "for ever".

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Turns out I like my prehistoric stories more realistic, less spiritual/magical. Spirits, magic, demons, curses were all real things in the story's world.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - I'd do three and three-quarters stars if I had an icon for that. Just a tad under "Liked".

Comments

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

I tried this one a long time ago! https://dogeardiary.com/2008/01/wolf-brother/ (https://dogeardiary.com/2008/01/wolf-brother/) It didn't work for me, either.

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

oops sorry, forgot how to properly put a link in the comments

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Good to know it's not just me! I wonder what her adult books are like, do you remember if you remember if you tried any others by her? I used search on your site and didn't find anything, but I'm not sure if it just works for book titles.

Wiki has only one link to another of her books, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter_(Paver_novel) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter_(Paver_novel)). That actually sounds interesting, I might pick it up.

Apparently she's still writing, looks like she has a book coming out next year.

[jeane nevarez (from livejournal.com)]

I am pretty sure I haven't read any of her other books. My index (in the header, by author) is a better way to search- I think the search box doesn't pick up titles/authors from fields, though I have tried to fix that. The index is usually pretty up-to-date and accurate, though I haven't added anything to it since my TBI, it's another thing I REALLY need to catch up on (I manually put every book on the list).

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ah! Next time I'll try that. It's great to have an index like that. When I want to search for something, I have to load up an old program that backs up Livejournal. It hasn't been updated in 12+ years, and I expect any day now for it to stop working. (For most people it doesn't work anymore, I'm not sure why it still does for me.)

Sometimes using Google works "site: ", but it's kind of hit and miss.