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A review by skylacine
Midnight's Sun by Garry Kilworth
challenging
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.0
It's eh, okay, I guess? After reading Hunter's Moon by the same author, which was really good, I had pretty high hopes for this one, but this is just...kind of meh.
We spend 90% of this book with the exact same character, Athaba, and not a lot of with other wolves, and that's inherently kind of a problem because I for the life of me couldn't get into Athaba as a protagonist. I thought he was an uninteresting character from start to finish. He doesn't change all that much throughout the story (most of his plot is about getting to a certain physical goal, rather than any personal growth). Some of the wolf characters around him were mildly interesting when compared to him (e.g. Raghistor, his mentor), but most of those characters are barely in the story and most of it is just Athaba alone (or with his human Koonama). And because I wasn't invested in the main character the rest of the story really didn't interest me much. Hunter's Moon had much better character writing than this.
The subplot of Athaba briefly "adopting" a human man he gets stranded with into his pack was kind of interesting but that's really the biggest compliment I can give the book.
The way this book handles wolf pack dynamics is also way off (even by dominance theory standards) but I'll give that a slide because it's an older book and it's at least a mildly interesting deviation from the norm, even if incorrect. The pack dynamics and lore in this story honestly interested me more than the main plot or character.
Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2024/07/book-review-midnights-sun-by-garry.html
We spend 90% of this book with the exact same character, Athaba, and not a lot of with other wolves, and that's inherently kind of a problem because I for the life of me couldn't get into Athaba as a protagonist. I thought he was an uninteresting character from start to finish. He doesn't change all that much throughout the story (most of his plot is about getting to a certain physical goal, rather than any personal growth). Some of the wolf characters around him were mildly interesting when compared to him (e.g. Raghistor, his mentor), but most of those characters are barely in the story and most of it is just Athaba alone (or with his human Koonama). And because I wasn't invested in the main character the rest of the story really didn't interest me much. Hunter's Moon had much better character writing than this.
The subplot of Athaba briefly "adopting" a human man he gets stranded with into his pack was kind of interesting but that's really the biggest compliment I can give the book.
The way this book handles wolf pack dynamics is also way off (even by dominance theory standards) but I'll give that a slide because it's an older book and it's at least a mildly interesting deviation from the norm, even if incorrect. The pack dynamics and lore in this story honestly interested me more than the main plot or character.
Full review at: https://skybookcorner.blogspot.com/2024/07/book-review-midnights-sun-by-garry.html