Beer And Books Book Club Review – Megan Lindholm – Wolfs Brother
Beer And Books Book Club Review – Megan Lindholm – Wolf’s Brother.
1988 Voyager Books.
Spoilers
The direct sequel/continuation to The Reindeer People, taking up right where the first volume left off. This was chosen with great enthusiasm as the Beer & Books Book club group at Vinyl Tap, Preston, Lancashire, attendees (myself included) universally loved the first book. While this is still a very good read, I personally didn’t feel it quite lives up to the strengths of the first half. Some situations and conflict resolutions feel rushed almost as a box ticking exercise. Reindeer people was almost a hundred pages longer than this one and this could have had more room to breathe and develop things. Many central players, Tillu, Kerlew, Carp, and Heckram are separated for much of the story.
The arrival of Carp in the closing chapters of book one changes the dynamic of everything. He attains a position of power remarkably quickly as he clearly has some Shamanistic gifts and the tribe has had no shaman since the death of their previous one years before. Unfortunately, Carp puts the sham in shaman, and he is a very bogus religious leader, accumulating riches and taking the finest foods in the name of sacrificial offerings.
His hold over Kerlew, who he is grooming as an apprentice, cuts Kerlew off his mother and she as well as Heckram seem powerless to prevent it. While Heckram does get to spend more time with the Shaman and his apprentice he doesn’t say much of what he sees on his rare meet ups with Tillu.
A great new character is Kari, a troubled girl hoping for aid in self mutilation with owl markings to make her less desirable in order to escape an arranged marriage she sees doomed to. Tillu wisely delays her and takes her on board as her own apprentice, unaware of Kari’s tragic fate.
Finally we get to see what the Cataclysm is, a giant glacial spur mentioned several times in book one without being plainly identified.
Kerlew goes on two long walkabouts in this book, and they are a weakening element. In the first, he goes off in the night to face off to a wolf pack who avoid him, (there is actually no genuine recorded case of a wolf attacking a human) so is it Kerlew’s gifts and sense of blood bond to a wolf or just a natural reaction by the pack? The problem with this event are that we see it three times in succession with some variation. 1/. Kerlew’s own point of view of the event. 2/. Heckram figuring out the same set of events from the clues as he tracks Kerlew when searching for him, and Kerlew identifies him as the Brother Wolf of the title. 3/. Heckram tells the story again to Tillu when letting her know that her son is safe. This is stretched over several chapters.
The same plot devise is then quickly used again when Kerlew goes missing a second time and we see his adventure on top of the Cataclysm, before we see Kari, Carp and Heckram all go up there too. Heckram describes the ascent as perilous and restrictive but the others seem to manage the climb much more easily.
The Bone Njad (shaman), actually the skeletal corpse of the tribe’s previous Shaman) is a powerful force who seems real rather than just a fixture of Kerlew’s imagination. He seems to be genuinely in touch with Carp, who he Jedi mind-trick throws off the cliffs of the Cataclysm spectacularly but rather abruptly. I do like the additional misery of Carp’s death in his broken body dying body being crushed by trampling reindeer but I would have liked to see him become answerable to Heckram, Tillu and the tribe rather than brushed out of the narrative so suddenly.
Kari’s tragedy is very sad and I had expected her to grow to become a new healer for the Reindeer People as Tillu & Heckram moved on, possibly leaving Kerlew behind (the ending I expected).
There are strong scenes between Tillu & Capium, stubbornly refusing her full healing following his poisoning, and pleading a case for his difficult unpopular leadership decisions. It stops him seeming just an insufferable jerk. Sadly, he gets little to say or do in the final confrontation that he ought to be able to end with his voice of authority.
The rushed conflict – Book two had strong elements of mystery and promises of a struggle between Heckram and Joabim. Who killed Ella? Some indications even pointed to Kerlew. Now it is found plainly to have been Joabim, and Kerlew has not only found out about it but personally confronts the stronger, bigger man intent on leadership by strength. They even work out that Joabim fired the arrow that wounded a man Tillu thought she had accidentally done early on in book one.
The fight is rushed, often confusing and frantic. Tillu watches helplessly as her son is wounded and then Heckram. Several times she assumes Heckram dead or beyond healing but he keeps coming back for more, finally dispatching Joabim, and Tillu is able to heal even his deep knife wounds that would be a challenge even with modern surgery, as such internal bleeding would surely be beyond even a good Prehistoric herbal healer’s skills to put right, plus her son’s injuries. I did like how the tent is ripped open to expose Joabim’s murderous rampage to everyone, but no one, even Capium really comments on the events they witness.
The finale with Tillu accepting that the tribe sees Kerlew as the new Njad, even though he is using some natural skills gained from his Mother and Heckram too is lovely. Tillu’s son still seems lost to her though he is a sincere guide to the tribe.
Much of the resolution comes from nowhere, and it all felt like the author was hurrying to wrap all this up. This book needed more room to breath and though still carrying much great writing it is not up to the strengths of the first volume.
Our next reading choice is a western, Charles Portis’s 1968 novel, True Grit, filmed twice, first in 1969 with John Wayne as Rooster Cogburn, and in 2010, with Jeff Bridges in the iconic role.
My thanks to Millie Angel, Beer & Books Book Club organiser, the group members and host pub Vinyl Tap too.
Photos taken by myself.
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Arthur Chappell
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