Elaine White's Life in Books

You can read my full review here - https://www.divinemagazine.biz/book-review-wolfs-own-bundle-by-carole-cummings/ - individually reviewing all 4 novels, the short included in the bundle, the free shorts/deleted scenes on the author's website, as well as a series review.

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Book – Wolf's-Own
Author – Carole Cummings
Star rating - ★★★★☆
No. of Pages – 994
POV – 3rd person, multi-POV
Would I read it again – Books 1 and 2 – YES. Books 3 and 4 - No
Genre – LGBT, Paranormal, Fantasy, Samurai-esque


** I WAS GIVEN THIS BOOK FOR MY READING PLEASURE **
Reviewed for Divine Magazine


*WARNING: this bundle includes triggers for suicide, self-harm, slavery, mental illness, contains violence, BDSM submissive elements and death.*


Wolf's-Own is a fantasy series that follows the life of Fen Jacin, while simultaneously exploring the life of Kamen Malick, loyal to the god Wolf and considered Wolf's-Own. Between the pair, there is plenty of chemistry, sex and violence. They share a love/hate relationship which morphs into a kind of love where they can accept the worst parts of each other more easily than they can accept their love for each other. In the mix are Malick's band of merry assassins and friends – Umeia, Yori, Shig, Samin – and Jacin's family – Joori, Morin and Caidi – whom he'll do anything to protect.

Within the first two books (which are more like one extended novel) the dynamic is explosive, the chemistry is off the charts and the plot is seamlessly woven into the lives of all those involved. It's in books three and four (another extended novel cut into two parts) that things begin to fall apart.

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OVERALL

I fell in love with book 1 instantly. The journey was amazing, exciting and full of emotions that I wasn't prepared to experience when I cracked open the book for the first time. Then the journey ended abruptly, but in a way that felt like a really clever cliffhanger and in a place that I was okay leaving it, at the time. I was too caught up in the story to notice or care whether it was too quickly or not neatly done. Book 2 dragged me under just as deeply and easily.

Sadly, book 3 saw the beginning of the end and I no longer felt compelled to love every inch of this bundle. In fact, by the end of book 3, I was pretty set on buying the paperbacks and re-reading only books 1 and 2, in the future. Book 3 didn't even make it into e-book re-reading territory, because it lacked so much of the clever plotting and storytelling of the first two books.

Books 1 and 2 are one story. Books 3 and 4 are another. However, it's clear that both stories were far too long to be contained in one novel, so have been halved in two. Unfortunately, this doesn't work so well for book 3, which is left dangling like the little lost boy who doesn't really know his purpose, until book 4 comes in to actually move things along.

Book 3 was too long, too focused on Jacin's insanity, which we already knew well, and, without Malick it just lacked those lighthearted moments that broke up the awkwardness of being within Jacin's unstable mind. Unlike book 1, which focused on showing the characters in as much detail and background as needed to follow the rest of the story, book 3 didn't have a purpose in mind; it merely gave jumbled events that didn't make sense until book 4, while not doing much to progress the story.

Is there a significance to the titles? Well, I'm not sure. Ghost is self-explanatory. Weregild has no meaning that I can discern, either in relation to the characters or the plot, unless you stretch it a bit thin and relate it to the fact that everything they do is in Wolf's name, due to Malick, and they've somehow, inexplicably, become a Weregild in those terms. The same goes for Koan. I can find no explanation for that anywhere within the text, with a name as I'd expected it might be, or within the glossary. Incendiary, again, is self-explanatory. However, the only “theme” within the titles that I can find is that Ghost and Incendiary pretty much explain Fen's part in the tale. The other two, since I don't know what they stand for or mean, will have to be left up for debate.

I'd definitely recommend going onto the author's website and reading at least the deleted scenes and Breath Like a Passing Shadow, if you loved books 1 and 2. If you've read all the way to the end of the bundle/series, then also read Breathe Me, as it offers a little something from after the timeline of the bundle. They definitely add a little something to the story that's worth reading.

So, though the characters were wonderfully interesting, evocative and in some ways relatable, and the storytelling took us on a real journey into a world that I didn't know but quickly felt comfortable in, the plot of the second storyline fell too flat to leave me feeling excited about this bundle. It's a game of two halves; the first was brilliance and re-readable material, the second had small moments that shone through, like when Malick and Jacin were together or when Morin found his voice, but they were too few and far between to salvage the lacklustre storyline and the somewhat forced 'revelations' that twisted most of the characters – like Shig and Joori, but especially Jacin – into something they'd never been before.