Author: David Wellington
Title: Ravaged
Genre: Urban Fantasy
ISBN: 9780749952433
‘The days grow colder. The nights grow longer. And every time the moon rises, the wolf inside her grows a little stronger.’
Vampires are my creature of the night, but this book made me think twice. Even for a short while. Werewolves have become cool! I realised only half way through that I was reading a book that was part of a series. I haven’t been able to figure out if its a series of two or three but the characters have enough history that there is definitely at least one book before this one. Possibly two.
Chey is fighting with her werewolf; battling with a creature far older than she could ever imagine to retain her sanity. To save her the man who gave her the curse in the first place takes her north towards the Arctic Circle where they hope to find the one thing that can cure them of the curse and make them human again.
This was my ‘at work’ book. Not one of the ones from Alt Fiction, I actually picked it up at The Works for about £2.50. David Wellington is a chap I’ve never heard of before but I’ll be looking for this book again.
The pacing is brilliant, keeping you rolling along at a fast clip that still manages to engage you without having the full background of what happened in the previous novel. It would be nice to know, but you don’t need it necessarily.
I love the way he utterly separates the werewolves from the humans; its almost like reading two books. If you were to take the wolf chapters away from the human ones, it would make some very interesting reading. He gets right into the mind of the wolf and the mythological aspect of the tale is one I’ve not come across before. I don’t know anything about the spirits of the Inuits, but now I’m really keen to look.
Its a take of the werewolf curse I’ve not come across before, but the only question I have about it now is how much of an affect the end of the book will have on future tales.
Ambiguous in a nice way though; certainly not taking away from the satisfaction of a story well told and an ending that is clean and touching. Finishing it up today I found myself speed reading to get towards the end, racing towards the end just like Chey and Powell to make sure I reached my destination before time ran out.
Clean, straight forward story telling with a hint of the spiritual and just enough love and/or jealously to keep it gently burning. Loved it!
