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beccaand's review
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, and Blood
Moderate: Violence, Animal death, Death of parent, Gun violence, and Injury/Injury detail
chronicacademia's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal death, Death of parent, Death, and Violence
thelittlebookishnerd's review
adventurous
emotional
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves started off strong and didn't let up until the very end. Wolves are one of my favorite animals, so I loved every minute spent with Iska. I don't know how Meg Long did it, but I feel like I just came back from an adventure on another world! The world of Tundar was so vivid, it was easy to imagine being in the icy wind and snow, and surrounded by the dark, dangerous woods. Every creature jumped off the page.
If you're looking for a YA sci-fi novel with romance, this isn't it. If you don't normally read sci-fi but want to try, this is the perfect novel. If you're looking for a book with an immersive world to get lost in, I highly recommend Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves.
If you're looking for a YA sci-fi novel with romance, this isn't it. If you don't normally read sci-fi but want to try, this is the perfect novel. If you're looking for a book with an immersive world to get lost in, I highly recommend Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Animal cruelty, and Animal death
Moderate: Violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Death of parent
Minor: Torture and Racism
lizgriffinwords's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Balto in Space! A found-family adventure on a treacherous ice planet, where the stakes are high and anything on this planet could kill you. Sena’s tendency to blame herself for everything (even things far behind her control) resonated so much. No romance, just friendship with her wolf and her team of scientist friends.
CW: violence, classism & in-world racism, injury (people and animals) including frostbite
CW: violence, classism & in-world racism, injury (people and animals) including frostbite
Content Warnings
Moderate: Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, and Death of parent
Minor: Classism
fl0tsam's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Everytime you think the bad things are over something new and bad happens. If you want to know if it will have a happy ending or not check behind this spoiler tag: It has a happy, hopeful ending even if not everything has gone well.
I finished the whole thing so it can't be that bad but seriously don't read/listen if you're looking for something lighthearted.
I finished the whole thing so it can't be that bad but seriously don't read/listen if you're looking for something lighthearted.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Violence, and Gun violence
Moderate: Death of parent
sunlit_music's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
informative
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Characterisation - the characters are realistic, flawed, and interesting. I like Sena's friendship with Kaasen, Remy and Pana, and her growing friendship with the wolf Iska. They are strong, brave, kind and loyal to each other. Remy has a great sense of humour! And Pana is really nice too. Sena is resourceful, clever and determined. Her relationship with her adopted aunt Kirima is touching and heartfelt. :)
Sena's grief about her mothers' deaths in race sledding is handled sensitively and realistically, with empathy and tact.
World building - world building is detailed, unique and believable. The world of racing in snow is so well researched! What I like best are the wildlife descriptions, about the wolves and bears, along with the monsters.
I found it fascinating that the exo carbon on the planet is used for many things, including helping clothes repel electricity. Also refreshing to read a dystopia where technology isn't heavily centred (the technology doesn't always work because of the icy weather).
Issue of racism and colonisation against Scavvers is handled empathically and realistically, which I deeply appreciate.
Plot - plot is action packed, and driven by the main character's actions. Medical wounds are treated realistically but not explicit, which makes the story easier to read.
The plot is a mixture of fast and slow pacing. Action scenes are fast paced and exciting. Scenes where the characters are learning survival skills or bonding are slower paced, which helps make the story more believable.
Ending - the ending is uplifting and hopeful. It makes sense and is well earned by Sena.
Highly recommended!
Sena's grief about her mothers' deaths in race sledding is handled sensitively and realistically, with empathy and tact.
World building - world building is detailed, unique and believable. The world of racing in snow is so well researched! What I like best are the wildlife descriptions, about the wolves and bears, along with the monsters.
I found it fascinating that the exo carbon on the planet is used for many things, including helping clothes repel electricity. Also refreshing to read a dystopia where technology isn't heavily centred (the technology doesn't always work because of the icy weather).
Issue of racism and colonisation against Scavvers is handled empathically and realistically, which I deeply appreciate.
Plot - plot is action packed, and driven by the main character's actions. Medical wounds are treated realistically but not explicit, which makes the story easier to read.
The plot is a mixture of fast and slow pacing. Action scenes are fast paced and exciting. Scenes where the characters are learning survival skills or bonding are slower paced, which helps make the story more believable.
Ending - the ending is uplifting and hopeful. It makes sense and is well earned by Sena.
Highly recommended!
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal death, Death of parent, Death, Violence, Racism, Grief, and Colonisation
alexandra73's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Violence
Moderate: Animal death
jessiewolf's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
4.5
This fast-paced, action-packed book hit all the right spots for me. Girl on adventure? Check. Survival in icy tundra? Check. WOLVES? Check!! Sena faces obstacle after obstacle as she resists a legacy that seems to be her fate: racing in a deadly journey on an icy planet with wolf hybrids being used as sled dogs. Note that there is animal abuse, but it happens almost entirely off-page. Animals and humans also face danger and violence from nature and other animals.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Death of parent, and Violence
Minor: Animal death
readswithrachel's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
If you like the sound of Han Solo meets Baltic, you’ll lie this book. It’s light scifi on an ice planet with a thief trying to get off the planet, and a sled dog race. And commentary on capitalism. Very atmospheric and a good choice if you want a book that’ll make you feel the cold.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Blood, and Animal death
sarahmreads's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
Sena is fighting for her life on Tundar, an ice planet separate from Old Earth that is known for its sled races. She despises the races since her mothers had died in their last race, and she especially despises the vonenwolves that help make it happen. However, when the mob boss she works under has an injured wolf, he tasks Sena with helping it get back to full health, or else he will throw her in the race. Will Sena comply, or will she end up in the same fate as her mothers?
The worldbuilding is perfect for readers who want to get into science fiction stories but don't want t be completely thrown into a new world. A lot of the systems are similar to our world, especially the idea of the sled racing and a bunch of other elements, but still has a lot of elements unfamiliar to us that are explained pretty well in my opinion, such as genetic modification. I will admit that some things felt a little bit forced just because they fit well with a specific part of the story. Example with minor spoilers: one of the characters is revealed to be a genopath, a human genetically experimented and modified on to basically be a better version of a human. Yet, when it is revealed, it's like Sena already knew about this but just didn't tell the reader. Not only that, but it's also not mentioned anywhere else in the story until this moment, so it feels forced in just for an additional layer of depth.
This story moved extremely slow for me, mainly due to the fact that a lot of the same stuff keeps happening over and over. This includes Sena sneaking around bases, Sena being aggravated, Sena grieving her mothers, and Sena constantly checking her surroundings after one noise. It felt so repetitive, and as a result it really lessened the impact of these things and the bigger implication of them. Sure, the book did have some great moments of suspension and tension, but their impact just didn't have as strong as a punch on me, to the point where I was like "oh okay, we're doing this again." Also, the plot twist at the end was extremely predictable, at least for me.
Speaking of Sena grieving her mothers, I want to talk about Sena as a character. For me, she wasn't the strongest main character. Yes, she can fight and I was extremely impressed by her knowledge of races and also the world of Tundar. However, those were the only real pluses I could attribute to her. She's extremely sheltered as a person and still kind of is at the end. She was basically defined by her mothers' deaths throughout the entire story, like you couldn't go ten pages without her mothers being brought up. As a result, Sena felt just completely defined by her trauma and nothing else as a person, which was extremely hard to read since I couldn't completely connect to her.
A good portion of this book is also bonding between Sena and the wolf she's tasked to heal, Iska. I liked their tension a lot at the beginning of the story, but it seemed to mellow out too quickly for my liking. Iska was trained to be a fighting wolf, and Sena grew up raising sled wolves, so they come from two completely different backgrounds. But when one saves the other's life, that's when stuff shifts. But it comes too quickly of a shift, and when you think a bond is starting to form it's yanked back in progression. It grew too fast when there should have been a more gradual progression with their relationship.
The characters were also mainly split into two categories: those who are actually good, and the assholes who have no redeeming qualities. I usually like my "asshole" characters to have some depth to them besides their main quality trait being to piss off the main character. As a result, their words and actions didn't have much of an impact on me, which sucks because a lot of their purpose is to be racist towards the indigenous peoples of Tundar, which Sena genetically is. Maybe the purpose of it was to show how Indigenous peoples can become desensitized to racist slurs and comments, but that is not my place to say as I am not a person of Indigenous heritage. I can't also comment on the representation of Indigenous peoples as a white person.
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is a good starter science fiction novel but not the best when it comes to execution, with heavily repetitive actions and messy characterization.
I received a copy of this novel as an e-ARC from NetGalley. Any and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
The worldbuilding is perfect for readers who want to get into science fiction stories but don't want t be completely thrown into a new world. A lot of the systems are similar to our world, especially the idea of the sled racing and a bunch of other elements, but still has a lot of elements unfamiliar to us that are explained pretty well in my opinion, such as genetic modification. I will admit that some things felt a little bit forced just because they fit well with a specific part of the story. Example with minor spoilers: one of the characters is revealed to be a genopath, a human genetically experimented and modified on to basically be a better version of a human. Yet, when it is revealed, it's like Sena already knew about this but just didn't tell the reader. Not only that, but it's also not mentioned anywhere else in the story until this moment, so it feels forced in just for an additional layer of depth.
This story moved extremely slow for me, mainly due to the fact that a lot of the same stuff keeps happening over and over. This includes Sena sneaking around bases, Sena being aggravated, Sena grieving her mothers, and Sena constantly checking her surroundings after one noise. It felt so repetitive, and as a result it really lessened the impact of these things and the bigger implication of them. Sure, the book did have some great moments of suspension and tension, but their impact just didn't have as strong as a punch on me, to the point where I was like "oh okay, we're doing this again." Also, the plot twist at the end was extremely predictable, at least for me.
Speaking of Sena grieving her mothers, I want to talk about Sena as a character. For me, she wasn't the strongest main character. Yes, she can fight and I was extremely impressed by her knowledge of races and also the world of Tundar. However, those were the only real pluses I could attribute to her. She's extremely sheltered as a person and still kind of is at the end. She was basically defined by her mothers' deaths throughout the entire story, like you couldn't go ten pages without her mothers being brought up. As a result, Sena felt just completely defined by her trauma and nothing else as a person, which was extremely hard to read since I couldn't completely connect to her.
A good portion of this book is also bonding between Sena and the wolf she's tasked to heal, Iska. I liked their tension a lot at the beginning of the story, but it seemed to mellow out too quickly for my liking. Iska was trained to be a fighting wolf, and Sena grew up raising sled wolves, so they come from two completely different backgrounds. But when one saves the other's life, that's when stuff shifts. But it comes too quickly of a shift, and when you think a bond is starting to form it's yanked back in progression. It grew too fast when there should have been a more gradual progression with their relationship.
The characters were also mainly split into two categories: those who are actually good, and the assholes who have no redeeming qualities. I usually like my "asshole" characters to have some depth to them besides their main quality trait being to piss off the main character. As a result, their words and actions didn't have much of an impact on me, which sucks because a lot of their purpose is to be racist towards the indigenous peoples of Tundar, which Sena genetically is. Maybe the purpose of it was to show how Indigenous peoples can become desensitized to racist slurs and comments, but that is not my place to say as I am not a person of Indigenous heritage. I can't also comment on the representation of Indigenous peoples as a white person.
Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is a good starter science fiction novel but not the best when it comes to execution, with heavily repetitive actions and messy characterization.
I received a copy of this novel as an e-ARC from NetGalley. Any and all thoughts and opinions are my own.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Racial slurs, and Racism
Moderate: Animal death, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Gun violence, and Injury/Injury detail
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