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Wolf's Cross (2010)

by S.A. Swann(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

0553807390 (ISBN13: 9780553807394)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Spectra

series

Wolfbreed

review 1: For all it's interesting set up and historical setting, once you are intriduced to the main characters, you can only see the story going in one particular direction and the narrative tries to do what it can to keep the reader engaged and guessing, which it does a relatively good job of. But once the plot takes it's final turn you can pretty much tell what is going to happen, and I didn't bother confiring my suspicions apart from skimming the last few pages , thinking 'ahh thought as much.' Like Wolfbreed, which I have also read, Wolf's Cross paints a sympathetic picture of the Werewolf curse, which is in this instance, not a curse at all, but something one is born into. The real curse I suppose is grappling with the primal, unencumbered bestial side whilst trying desperate... morely to reconcile it with innately good human nature; can you live impaled on the dilemma, or do you reject one for the other? That is the question that forms the crux of both books. Religious bigotry, as we know was rampant almost to plague proportions in the setting it is placed in, and indeed it might be said, with some conviction, that the purge of the pagans by the encroaching new religion claimed far more innocent lives than any disease. Blind zealotry is the villain here, as are victims of an irretrievably warped and scarred past. An interesting, sometimes gripping always engaging read that somewhat lets itself down with a predictable denouement.
review 2: In Swann’s first book in this series, Wolfbreed, we were introduced to a young girl who had grown up treated like a monster, but who found a way to reconcile who she was with who she could be. In this second book, set a hundred years later in 14th century Poland, it’s the exact opposite set up. Maria grew up human, unaware of who she was or what she could become. Upon learning of her heritage, she has to reconcile the monster she sees herself becoming to the human she wants to remain.I enjoyed Wolf’s Cross more than its predecessor. I found myself empathizing more with Maria’s problems than I had with Lilly’s. Maria’s problems, though similar to Lilly’s (just from the opposite spectrum), felt more developed. Whereas Lilly struggled with the notion of being a human, Maria struggled with being herself; for Maria it was a question of whether she could retain herself while lost in the power of being the wolf.A lot has happened since Lilly’s time, as well; her kind are no longer servants of the Order, but feared enemies hunted mercilessly (and brutally, I might add) by “wolfjagers.” Darien, a survivor of a massacre twenty years previously by the wolfjagers, is our only clue to what happened to other wolfbreeds. As his community had survived for nearly 150 years before the wolfjagers, it opens up tantalizing possibilities for other stories.I was a little at odds with the Darien-Maria-Josef triangle. It was an unbalanced triangle, but not in the usual female has no idea who she really wants to be with. After finding out her true heritage, but only having Darien as an example, Maria is a confused tangle of emotions. On the one hand, she thrills at the power she feels as a wolf, but as a human she feels guilt and she is uncertain whether that’s her true path. Then again, with Josef she feels nothing but guilt for being everything he hates. I wish there had been more time for her to explore being with Darien vs. being with Josef. As it was, the entire Darien aspect was given an abrupt ending.A personal nitpick I had was that in Wolfbreed I spent a lot of time looking facts up. Which isn’t a bad thing–I have a whole new subject to obsess over now–but it took me out of the novel itself too frequently. It helped this time that due to a different interest altogether, I knew more about 14th century Poland. The pacing and flow of the plot felt better, more fluid and involving. I was able to concentrate more on the politics of both the Order and the Polish.I read that the author hopes to write more stories about the Wolfbreed universe, set across more countries and times. I sincerely hope he is able to, as this is a fascinating series that I think has a lot of potential. less

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