"A Companion to Wolves"
Oct. 27th, 2007 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qosI'm reading more now that I'm in this house. The light is much better, for one thing. And my daughter has her own room that she likes to be in, so the noise of her games doesn't interfere. I watched a lot of DVD's over the past few years, but for some reason that has less appeal these days. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's as simple as the TV no longer being the focal point of the living room.
Last night I started reading A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. It's not going to be one of my top-rated books, but it's engrossing enough. The main quibble I have is that the Nordic-flavored names have so many similar-sounding syllables in them that I have a hard time keeping track of which character is a man, which a wolf, and which pairs are bonded.
It wasn't until this morning that I realized the debt these authors owe to Anne McCaffrey's Pern stories. In both mythos there are a group of community halls set apart for those who live with powerful animals. Young humans are taken from the ordinary halls (maybe not in Pern?) to bond with the young beasts at the animal halls, with some being chosen and some rejected. Those who do bond live at the hall and spend much of their time training to battle the danger that threatens their society. In Pern, dragonriders defend against the mysterious thread, which the dragons burn from the sky before it can fall and burn the people and crops below. In the wolf-halls the men and the giant wolves battle trolls and wyvern. And in each society, when the female animals come into season, their bonded partners share the experience of both arousal and battle-passion as the males compete for the right to breed.
In the books that I read, McCaffrey set up this potentially explosive situation and then found ways to ensure that the men who were favored by the female dragons' companions were the ones whose dragons won the mating race -- even writing a scene where a brown dragon became the first to outpace the larger, stronger bronzes to mate with a golden queen when his rider was most favored by the queen's. Male human bonds with male dragon and female with female, so there is always heterosexual balance.
In Monette and Bear's world, only men bond with wolves, which sets up a situation of inevitable homosexuality. The authors write a world where this is not the societal norm, and many outsiders -- including the father of the protagonist -- try to refuse to send their sons for the tithe out of fear they will become sexual toys of the older men. Part of the development of the story is the protagonist's own feelings about this, his discovery of two of the older men making love outside of a wolf-mating situation, and coming to terms with his own realization that while he's nervous about it, he does find some of the men around him attractive. When his female pup starts nearing maturity an older man takes them both out on a solitary patrol and gently initiates him. Later, he and his companions who have immature wolves witness what happens when one of the female wolves come into season and men and wolves alike are plunged into the violence of mating passion.
The sexual aspect is an important theme in the book (although not developed anywhere near the point of making it an erotic novel, and none of the sexual scenes are written in an explicit manner), but the more important one is the development of Isolfr into a leader. Because his bonded companion is a konigenwolf -- an alpha female -- he is destined to be one of the two leaders of a wolfhall someday, but he has much to learn before he's ready to take on that responsibility. Meanwhile, the troll incursions are more frequent and bloody than they have been in decades, so there are plenty of battles to fight.
What I'm enjoying most is the portrayal of the wolves themselves, who are intelligent but not human. Their written/spoken names are human conveniences; their actual names are scent combinations. The human power/authority dynamic of the hall is strongly influenced by the wolf hierarchy -- which is headed by the konigenwolf, not an alpha male -- but the reverse is also true, and the men can and do take action to try to prevent certain kinds of conflict between the wolves.
The story could be deeper and more complex, but I'm enjoying it enough to finish, and if a sequel were to appear, I'd definitely check it out.
Last night I started reading A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. It's not going to be one of my top-rated books, but it's engrossing enough. The main quibble I have is that the Nordic-flavored names have so many similar-sounding syllables in them that I have a hard time keeping track of which character is a man, which a wolf, and which pairs are bonded.
It wasn't until this morning that I realized the debt these authors owe to Anne McCaffrey's Pern stories. In both mythos there are a group of community halls set apart for those who live with powerful animals. Young humans are taken from the ordinary halls (maybe not in Pern?) to bond with the young beasts at the animal halls, with some being chosen and some rejected. Those who do bond live at the hall and spend much of their time training to battle the danger that threatens their society. In Pern, dragonriders defend against the mysterious thread, which the dragons burn from the sky before it can fall and burn the people and crops below. In the wolf-halls the men and the giant wolves battle trolls and wyvern. And in each society, when the female animals come into season, their bonded partners share the experience of both arousal and battle-passion as the males compete for the right to breed.
In the books that I read, McCaffrey set up this potentially explosive situation and then found ways to ensure that the men who were favored by the female dragons' companions were the ones whose dragons won the mating race -- even writing a scene where a brown dragon became the first to outpace the larger, stronger bronzes to mate with a golden queen when his rider was most favored by the queen's. Male human bonds with male dragon and female with female, so there is always heterosexual balance.
In Monette and Bear's world, only men bond with wolves, which sets up a situation of inevitable homosexuality. The authors write a world where this is not the societal norm, and many outsiders -- including the father of the protagonist -- try to refuse to send their sons for the tithe out of fear they will become sexual toys of the older men. Part of the development of the story is the protagonist's own feelings about this, his discovery of two of the older men making love outside of a wolf-mating situation, and coming to terms with his own realization that while he's nervous about it, he does find some of the men around him attractive. When his female pup starts nearing maturity an older man takes them both out on a solitary patrol and gently initiates him. Later, he and his companions who have immature wolves witness what happens when one of the female wolves come into season and men and wolves alike are plunged into the violence of mating passion.
The sexual aspect is an important theme in the book (although not developed anywhere near the point of making it an erotic novel, and none of the sexual scenes are written in an explicit manner), but the more important one is the development of Isolfr into a leader. Because his bonded companion is a konigenwolf -- an alpha female -- he is destined to be one of the two leaders of a wolfhall someday, but he has much to learn before he's ready to take on that responsibility. Meanwhile, the troll incursions are more frequent and bloody than they have been in decades, so there are plenty of battles to fight.
What I'm enjoying most is the portrayal of the wolves themselves, who are intelligent but not human. Their written/spoken names are human conveniences; their actual names are scent combinations. The human power/authority dynamic of the hall is strongly influenced by the wolf hierarchy -- which is headed by the konigenwolf, not an alpha male -- but the reverse is also true, and the men can and do take action to try to prevent certain kinds of conflict between the wolves.
The story could be deeper and more complex, but I'm enjoying it enough to finish, and if a sequel were to appear, I'd definitely check it out.
