The Wolf Wilder | Review

The Wolf Wilder by Katherine Rundell - Middle Grade

Feodora lives in the snowy Russian woods with her mother and they are Wolf Wilders. They untame domesticated wolves that are no longer useful to the rich that had them tamed in the first place. They teach them how to run, sleep outside and how to relearn their wolf instincts so that they can survive in the wild again. This is how Feo has been brought up, around wolves, but the evil General Rakov has threatened to shoot any wolves and take her mother away if they continue wilding. With the help of an unlikely friend and her wolfpack, Feo must find a way stop Rakov and his men.

I found Rundell's use of description to be beautiful in places except that it did start to feel a little repetitive at times. As far as the plot goes, though there were a few quite eventful moments, they did seem to be stretched out and take up so much of the reader's time. There's a part in the middle where not a lot happens and I realise this is usually the time for character development/friendships to form, but this was just filled with metaphors and similes about wolf reactions and habits. I felt like I was just trudging through waiting for something to happen. The big climax of the story was predictable from very early on and ultimately left me feeling a little disappointed.

That said I found the characters to be well thought out as interesting and unique individuals, even if there really was no connection between any of them at all. Feo is an intuitive and sort of half ferrel child who will not give up. Rakov was a great villain and managed to appear in places you'd least expect to find him. Alexei was irritating, but very realistic for an anti-government teen and Ilya had a unique backstory that I kind of wish we'd learned more about.

I'm not sure why I was drawn to this book. I don't usually read books over 300 pages without having heard a few reviews first, but the cover does boast high praise from Phillip Pullman so perhaps that  was what swayed me? This book is very beautifully published with fantastic cover art. Also Gelrev Ogbico's gorgeous illustrations throughout it really made this book for me.

Overall I gave this 3 out of 5 stars. I loved the premise of this story, the description was beautiful and the characters were original, but I feel like this could have been edited down to between 200-250 pages. In my opinion a little more development to the overall plot would have taken it a long way too. Rundell's debut novel, Rooftoppers, has won a couple of prizes and has received very high praise so I'm probably going to seek that one out to see if I like it any better.

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