Book Review: Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves by Meg Long
Occasionally a book comes along that is just so perfect in everything from plot to character development to pacing that you can't help but wish you could read it for the first time again and again. Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves by Meg Long is that book.
From the first page, I was hooked. This is a fast paced sci-fi-y survival story done exactly right. There are tropes- oh, there are tropes galore- but they are executed to perfection. Main character Sena is your typical stubborn, hard-headed, fearless YA protagonist with dead parents but she's so well written I didn't care what a stereotype she was because she was real.
The Plot
Seventeen year old orphan Sena lives on a frozen, monster-infested ice planet called Tundar. The one thing that attracts people to the barely-hospitable world is a yearly dogsled race where teams attempt to reach a deposit of the valuable element called exocarbon which can be mined and sold for huge amounts of money. The race, however, is unbelievably dangerous and few survive to reap their rewards. In fact, the race is what claimed Sena's mothers' lives, leading her to become one of the few people on the planet not interested in competing.
Sena ends up in over her head with an angry mob boss and a series of events predictably leads her to join the race against her will, along with a wolf stolen from said mob boss. Not just any wolf, but a vicious fighting wolf who happens to bear Sena's mother's name, Iska, plus a ragtag racing crew who are more interested in the science of the exocarbon than the typical money hungry, brutish racers.
Why I Loved It
Sena's relationship with the wolf Iska is everything I've ever wanted in a book. It is beautiful and heart-wrenching and completely believable. The way Sena and Iska start as strangers, each equally wary of the other, and come to depend on each other, two brave souls, alone in the world until they find each other, was a thousand times more fulfilling than any romance subplot I can think of.
The side characters are interesting in their own way, though none nearly as compelling as Sena and Iska. And even though I suspected exactly what their fates would be, I had to read to find out how they get there because the journey is the whole point of this book.
I cannot think of one dull moment in Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves. The plot moves along at breakneck speed, every scene, every line of dialogue moving it forward. I felt like I was flying through this book as fast as Sena and Iska flew through the trails, barely time to stop and check my surroundings. In fact, if there was one negative thing I could say about this book, it's that it isn't longer. On the short side for its genre, Long could easily have added another 100-200 pages, giving rich backstory to interesting side characters, but perhaps to stretch the story out would be to lose some of its magic. The book certainly doesn't suffer for its speedy plot.
Romance Haters Rejoice
One thing worth mentioning, both for those who will be pleasantly surprised and those who will be disappointed, is the book’s complete lack of romance. Sena has no real love interest, and to shoehorn any in would truly be to take away from the plot and the perilous, lonely, barely survivable journey Sena is on. However, there are likely some who will be disappointed, especially as several characters seem perfectly poised to be a love interest to grumpy Sena but nothing ever comes of it.
At its core, Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is a story about the dangers of capitalism and corporate greed, wrapped up in a heart-pounding, heartbreaking tale of one girl and her wolf trying to survive against all odds.
Content warnings: death (graphic, human and animal), violence (graphic), gore (graphic), animal cruelty (graphic), murder, organized crime, abandonment
I received this ebook for free from Netgalley and the publisher, Wednesday Books. This in no way influenced my review, which contains my honest thoughts.
