'The Wolf of Oren-Yaro' – K.S. Villoso (Orbit)

Now here's a book that I've been keeping an eye open for. I have a real weak spot for a combination of eye catching cover and gripping blurb, a combination that this book has delivered. And it's fantasy, my 'go to' readng of choice. I've been after something a little new and 'The Wolf of Oren-Yaro' looked like it could deliver on that front as well. Of course, being me, I promptly went and missed the publication date but that's me these days :o) I got there in the end though and have been reading this book on and off for the last couple of weeks. I finished 'The Wolf of Oren-Yaro' yesterday and while it took a little while for me to really get into the 'groove' of the book (more on that further down the page), I am so glad I stuck with it, The book really is that good once it gets going, or maybe once I got going with it. Either way, I think you should read it if you haven't already (and you probably have, I'm always the last person to pick up cool books...) Have some blurb and then lets get on with the post.

'They called me the Bitch Queen, the she-wolf, because I murdered a man and exiled my king the night before they crowned me.'

Born under the towers of Oren-yaro, Queen Talyien inherited a deeply divided kingdom, devastated by years of war. Her marriage to the son of a rival clan was meant to herald peace, yet her fiancé disappeared before their reign could even begin.

Now, years later, Talyien receives a message that will send her across on the sea. Yet what was meant as an effort to reconcile the past leaves her stranded in a land she doesn't know, with assassins at her back and no idea who she can trust.

If Talyien is to survive, she must embrace her namesake.

A wolf of Oren-Yaro is not tamed.

Have you ever read a book where you’re having a good time with it and then suddenly everything clicks into place; you realise that you’re reading something (almost) entirely different and you’re actually having an even better time than you were to start off with? Welcome to my experience with ‘The Wolf of Oren-Yaro’, a book that admittedly took it’s time getting going but then was very much a book that I had to keep reading. Seriously, I usually sleep on the bus to work but the last couple of days have been all about Talyien and her fight to, well… I want you to read the book so I won’t spoil anything. Lets just say that she has to fight pretty much everything and there are sparks practically flying off the pages, it’s great.

But it does take it’s time to get going. I’m pretty sure that part of that is deliberately done so that you are not prepared for the moment where it all kicks off (I thought I was, I was wrong…) but what felt like a deep dive into the politics of Queen Talyien’s kingdom (and the Empire over the sea) slowed things down right at the start when it didn’t need slowing down. To be fair though, this could be entirely down to me reading the book, on the way to work, when I clearly needed a coffee to wake my brain up first… Basically, your mileage may vary.

When ‘The Wolf of Oren-Yaro’ does get going though, wow… There is so much going on that I was half expecting plot strands to just bust out and go wild. Not so, Villoso keeps everything on a tight rein and it’s a mark of something really special that you get to the end of the book and every plot strand and device just fits into place. I’m not the best at following a mystery (which ‘The Wolf of Oren-Yaro’ is, at least in part) but it was great to see it all come together here and think to myself, ‘so that’s why that happened…’ In ‘The Wolf of Oren-Yaro’, everything happens for a reason and it may not be the reason that you initially think. Villoso keeps a major twist under wraps right until the very end of the book and reveals it at just the right time to make book two required reading.

It’s not all just sword fights and detective work though (although those bits are incredibly cool). At its heart, ‘The Wolf of Oren-Yaro’ is all about what happens when you live your life around your parent’s wishes and suddenly, not only are you left to fend for yourself but your parent’s plans for you may not be what you thought… The Talyien who starts the book is not the Talyien who ends it and the journey in between is another reason why I found this book to be so compelling. Talyien not only finds herself in a new world, it’s a world that her upbringing has left her painfully unable to navigate. Talyien is a quick learner though (she has to be) and combined with her sheer determination to win through, we see a lot of change in her character which adds a real sense of humanity to the book as a whole and promises more good things for the sequel. And on the slim chance that K.S. Villoso ever reads this, can we have more Khine in the next book? He was great.

If you haven’t guessed already, I absolutely adored this book and can’t wait for the sequel. If you like your epic fantasy gritty, complicated and driven by a flawed character, who only wants to do the right thing, then you really need to be reading ‘The Wolf of Oren-Yaro’.