HNS Reviews - February 2010
DAUGHTER OF KURA
by Debra Austin (9781439112663)
Over half a million years ago on the plains of Africa, the ancient ancestors of humans—the species known today as homo erectus—band together in small groups to survive as best they can amid constant danger from predators, injury, and starvation. Each miniature society is run by a Mother, who ensures winter supplies are gathered and oversees mating rituals and domestic disputes. In one of these clans, a young female named Snap comes of age as granddaughter of the current Mother. Her own mother, mourning the loss of her mate, welcomes a stranger into their caves, a man with new and strange ideas that at first seem eccentric but soon prove dangerously divisive. When Snap refuses to abandon the old ways, she is ostracized, left to fend for herself in an environment where solitude equals certain death. Weakened and alone, she must draw on all her courage, determination, and strength to find a way not only to survive but to rescue those she loves from oppression and violence before it's too late.
The author brings a forgotten time and place to vivid life in her first novel. Her characters are both human and animal, but through her storytelling their lives run parallel to our own—naked hairy creatures who lick each other's wounds are also men and women who question authority and deal with political and religious turmoil. Some readers may have trouble adjusting to the modern dialogue; keep in mind that the characters communicate via sign language and non-verbal sounds, so the dialogue is a translation of meaning rather than words. Once the reader acclimatizes to this style, the story and characters make the chapters fly by. A unique and exciting adventure. Recommended.
WOLFBREED
by S.A. Swann (9780553807387)
In thirteenth-century Eastern Europe, a place of dark forests and darker mysteries, a young man named Udolf finds a strange girl in the wilderness, naked and injured. He takes the unconscious young woman to his adopted family, where they nurse her back to health. She seems grateful, yet speaks little and appears constantly terrified of some unknown danger. The family, and Udolf in particular, feel an affection for this seemingly innocent girl, but they are unaware of her secret: she is one of the wolfbreed, creatures kept hidden by the local German monks and used to terrorize and eliminate those who cling to the old religion. Now free from their brutal slavery, the young woman—Lilly—experiences kindness and joy for the first time in her life. But Lilly brings terrible dangers to her new family: danger from the outside, as those from whom she escaped stop at nothing to hunt her down; and danger from within, as she desperately tries to suppress the savage thing inside her. It is a creature trained from birth to kill without thought, and it could emerge at any moment to destroy those she loves and any chance for a human life.
A blend of romance, fantasy, and adventure, WOLFBREED is a dark, earthy tale tinged with the supernatural yet retaining a detailed sense of historical realism. The prose flows like a magic spell, drawing the reader into a well-researched medieval world of knights and monks, heroes and monsters, filled with sympathetic characters you will root for from the moment you meet them. Even if fantasy/romance isn't your regular genre, don't overlook this finely crafted story.
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