A review by joliendelandsheer
The Tiger and the Wolf by Adrian Tchaikovsky

3.0

Review first published on my blog The Fictional Reader

I’ll start by saying that there’s a theme for the books I’m reviewing today. I thought they were “meh”. They weren’t bad, not at all. But they weren’t great either. There was nothing special to grab my attention, to be honest.

This story had so much potential. The shifter clans of different animals are so intriguing! Especially the history. The tigers who used to rule the Northern Crown on the World, until the Wolves took over. There are different Wolf-clans, each with their own chieftain, but there is one ruling person in general. There are Snakes, Bears, Coyotes, etc. It’s really interesting, especially because they all have some traits we associate with those animals as well. I do think that a lot of the potential here wasn’t fulfilled.

I wasn’t really attached to any of the characters. I thought Broken Axe was really intriguing, and he’s the biggest reason I kept reading. Maniye wasn’t a bad or boring character, I just didn’t relate to her at all. Characters are incredibly important to me because when I don’t feel attached to them, I tend to not be captivated by the plot either. That was exactly the case here. I wasn’t captivated by the story. To be honest, I felt like there was no big plot-climax. You know what I mean? I didn’t feel like this story was building up to something, and it left me with one overall question: what was the point?

Like I said, I don’t think this is a bad book. I will definitely be trying some of the author’s other works because I’ve already enjoyed one other book by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Empire in Black and Gold. But I don’t think I’ll be continuing this series. This book has quite a high average rating on Goodreads though, so you may want to try it and decide for yourself.