A review by heelturn2
Gone to the Wolves by John Wray

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

3.25

I don’t know anything about metal; my mom was born in the same year as the protagonist of this book, but she was a punk/new wave kid and metal was smalltown bigoted jock music to her, so despite having pretty expansive music taste in the house as a kid, and a willingness to explore/experiment musically imparted to me, metal is not a genre I’m familiar with and (this is sincerely embarrassing but it DID prime me to feel sympathetic twd metalheads) most of what I know about it, like, anthropologically, is from Mountain Goats songs and John Darnielle books (jesus christ) ????

anyways. metal is obviously integral to the plot & vibe & themes of this story. lots of band namedrops, nerdy teens arguing about guitar specs, shows as places where major plot points occur,

varg vikernes shows up in a basement to be an evil loser for like 40 pages

etc. but it’s also a story you could tell (with differing details) about any weird little freak subcultures. what draws people to the culture? where do the tensions between sub factions lie? what are the internal contradictions - for ex, a music scene where everyone wears weird makeup and glitter and tight pants and is intensely, violently homophobic - ? how is it boring? who’s taking it way too fucking far? I enjoy this kind of story. I like the specifics of time and place and being like “oh my god this character is that fucking guy” or whatever. the lack of metal background didn’t detract for me. 

I liked the central trio. I like reading about incestuous conflict-ridden found families more than ones where everything is idyllic and sweet. I hate to say this but I felt like Leslie and Kira fell the tiniest bit flat!!! maybe it’s because we spend so much time in Kip’s head and get more of what he’s actually thinking & feeling, while Kira and Leslie are much more mysterious to the reader (& Kip)… but I felt like I needed a little more from them. maybe harder hitting critiques of Kip and one another from these two??? I’m not sure.

also I kind of think Kip and Leslie shouldve fucked too or something.

not in a fanfic way but like,

in some way that they regret and both diffuses and adds to the awkwardness and fighting.

I don’t think I like Kira as a hinge here, for half assed feminist media analysis reasons… it’s giving manic pixie dream girl but successfully averted because she kind of sucks.

again, really interesting to have her be such a possibly morally compromised character wrt her affiliation with white supremacy multiple times! but I wanted a little more exploration of this!!! she is totally comfortable around violence and assertion of oppressive power… that’s compelling, but not really shown to be as scary as it really could be…

I hope Leslie makes friends with some other black people at some point. I know that’s kind of the point - that he’s the lone black guy most of the time in this scene, that he’s in this weird position with his older white adoptive parents - but it’s a little brutal that we don’t see much of his thoughts on the matter. also some not so low-key

fatphobia

happening in the latter part of his arc unfortunately. idk man. I think Leslie and Kira are (for the most part) successfully written, interesting, flawed characters whose social positions are partially but not fully or satisfyingly explored here.

enjoyed & related to the way Kip’s anger issues were written and explored - always nice to see one’s heavy & shameful flaws appear not unsympathetically, fr. enjoyed the decision not to go into great expository detail about Kip and Kira’s traumatic childhoods. enjoyed the weird shift of the story from one thing to another in the back third of the book - clunky but fun and tense. 

overall, solid, some small and big flaws but had fun reading this and would probably check out John Wray’s other stuff.