Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tales

Brilliant White Peaks by Teng Rong.

This is one of the most realistic talking animal books I've ever read. From first word to (almost) last, the nameless wolf main character was completely believable as an animal. Other than the final chapter, dialogue was only used in the book to backup the wolves' body language.

Told through first person POV, the story followed a nameless wolf from birth to maturity. Though no wolf (or any animal/character) in the story had a name, instead the main character had a description that acted like a name for a couple of the wolves closest to him (his sister White-Ears, his mate Notch-Tail). There was also a black wolf he spent a lot of time with, but he never rose to "Black Wolf", just "the black wolf".

As good as the "talking animal" part of this book was, it was sadly a little slow at points. Because, when your character is a fully realistic wolf, what can cause plot tension? It rained, it snowed, a hunt succeeded, a hunt failed, he got chased away by a bear, he fought a wild cat. That's about the whole plot.

That being said, there was still a lot of emotion in the book. The settings (mountain, forest, marsh, sea) were really realistic. "Nature red in tooth and claw" summed up a lot of the book: So much hunting, so much death.

I'm not sure when/where all this was set. There were no humans, so either it was long ago or maybe in Alaska where a wolf might be able to live without ever encountering humans?

I'm really impressed with how realistic his wolves and world were! I even learned something: Sometimes he had his wolves hiss. I had no idea wolves did that, but I googled and they do.