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A review by caedocyon
A Companion to Wolves by Elizabeth Bear, Sarah Monette
2.0
Watch out if you are thinking about reading this---the main character is maybe a Kinsey 0.5, so it's hardly "M/M romance" unless your idea of M/M romance has nothing to do with actual gay men. Also, every sex scene is dubiously consensual at best, and most of them are worse.
For the record, I agree with every other review I've read, both positive and negative. Yes, it can be read as a more detailed and thoughtful take on what sex and social life is like when you're "soulbonded" to an animal, and about the harsh gender roles of historical Norse life. Yes, it can also be read as a slightly upscale version of a lot of terrible fanfic tropes like "going into heat" and "aliens wolves made them do it," and as very homophobic and misogynist besides.
But it did happen to be exactly the right level of trashy fantasy novel for me to read this week.
There were hints of openness to transfeminine characters (those who bond to wolves are men who love men as well as people perceived as men who have gender-transgressive interests), but there aren't any in the story unless you count Ulfmaer, whose name apparently means "wolf maiden." Nothing in the story would lead you to think Ulfmaer is anything but another of the buff hairy wolfbros, though.
Oh and yes, I started looking up the meaning of the characters' names partway through, in case it helped me tell them apart. It didn't really---there are too many characters, and their names are too similar, and most of them are fairly indistinguishable in word and deed, and you just can't keep track of them. This made the pack politics very hard to follow, which is unfortunate since the complications of both men and wolves having their own interlocking politics was supposed to be one of the main points of the book.
There's an implication throughout the book that Isolfr's position is very much like his sister's---in a very misogynist society, they're both going to make political marriages to people they may not like and aren't attracted to, and that's just the way things are. Towards the end of the book Isolfr has some interesting and fairly believable changes of heart about women's oppression. I liked that most of them are phrased in terms of Freyja's mythology---which, granted, I don't know that much about, independent of this book.
For the record, I agree with every other review I've read, both positive and negative. Yes, it can be read as a more detailed and thoughtful take on what sex and social life is like when you're "soulbonded" to an animal, and about the harsh gender roles of historical Norse life. Yes, it can also be read as a slightly upscale version of a lot of terrible fanfic tropes like "going into heat" and "
But it did happen to be exactly the right level of trashy fantasy novel for me to read this week.
There were hints of openness to transfeminine characters (those who bond to wolves are men who love men as well as people perceived as men who have gender-transgressive interests), but there aren't any in the story unless you count Ulfmaer, whose name apparently means "wolf maiden." Nothing in the story would lead you to think Ulfmaer is anything but another of the buff hairy wolfbros, though.
Oh and yes, I started looking up the meaning of the characters' names partway through, in case it helped me tell them apart. It didn't really---there are too many characters, and their names are too similar, and most of them are fairly indistinguishable in word and deed, and you just can't keep track of them. This made the pack politics very hard to follow, which is unfortunate since the complications of both men and wolves having their own interlocking politics was supposed to be one of the main points of the book.
There's an implication throughout the book that Isolfr's position is very much like his sister's---in a very misogynist society, they're both going to make political marriages to people they may not like and aren't attracted to, and that's just the way things are. Towards the end of the book Isolfr has some interesting and fairly believable changes of heart about women's oppression. I liked that most of them are phrased in terms of Freyja's mythology---which, granted, I don't know that much about, independent of this book.