‘The Hounds of Ash and other tales of Fool Wolf’ – Greg Keyes (Edge)

Page Count: 169 Pages

Before I talk about the story itself, I’d like to take a brief moment and just admire the absolutely gorgeous cover art on show, courtesy of Julie Dillon. Look at it, isn’t it lovely? It was covers like this that got me into Fantasy in the first place, far too long ago now, so it’s always a bit of a treat to see more recent books travel down that same road. I say, ‘recently’… I’ve just checked the inside and ‘The Hounds of Ash’ was published back in 2008… Damn, I feel old.

But anyway…

I did that thing I always end up doing where I buy a book (in this case, Greg Keyes’ ‘The Basilisk Throne’), hop on Amazon to see if I’ve missed any other books and then buy something else entirely and read that instead. I will read ‘The Basilisk Throne’ one day but the last couple of days have been all about ‘The Hounds of Ash’. Let me tell you about it.

Thrust into perilous action by his father’s spirit and his village’s shaman, Fool Wolf, perhaps the laziest of heroes in his father’s eyes, must face his battles, or face the wrath of his ancestors.

In this collection of short stories by Greg Keyes, Fool Wolf is thrown into the mercy of the gods of whom he worships and loaths. He is forced to defend himself against the destiny that he is to fulfill.

The mysteries of his ancestors is brought to light as Fool Wolf traverses the vast empire of his people’s land in search of answers, both surprising and expected. He must face his gods and goddesses and they use his body as a vessel to do their bidding.

This collection contains the following stories,

‘Wakes the Narrow Forest’
‘The Skin Witch’
‘The Fallen God’
‘The Python King’s Treasure’
‘The Hounds of Ash Part 1: The Sleeping Tide’
‘The Hounds of Ash Part 2: The Opal of Nah’
‘The Hounds of Ash Part 3’

The page count, at the top of this post, has probably already told you that these tales of Fool Wolf don’t hang around when you read them. They really don’t, each tale sets a scene and then challenges Fool Wolf to escape from it as quickly as possinble and without awakening the Goddess living within him. You can guess how that turns out (and you’d be right) but the fun definitely lies in watching Fool Wolf use some swordplay, but mostly his wit, to do just that. The whole point of Sword and Sorcery is that problems are there to be solved right now, there’s no time to mess around. Keyes holds true to that and pulls it off in some style. It all happens very smoothly but not so smoothly that it feels staged. Fool Wolf has the skills to move through this world but he’s not above a bit of bad luck every now and there are players out there who are just as cunning as he is. Which leads me into the structure of the book and it all comes together; you think you’re just reading a collection of short stories and then Keyes pulls back the curtain and you realise that everything happened for a reason and I loved the way that the end result is a book where you can read single stories or the whole thing and either way, it just works. Stand alone stories that somehow combine to become a standalone novel. Brilliant :o) I didn’t quite catch how it all fitted but I suspect that’s a result of reading far too early in the morning. There’s enough explanation for it not to matter, it was just the way it came together that got away from me.

And the worldbuilding is just wonderful, especially when you consider that there isn’t a lot of room, in each story, for this to get along with the character development and plot. I’ve never read the ‘Waterborn’ books (that may have to change) but that didn’t affect my ability to move through this world. Keyes doesn’t give himself a lot of room to manoeuvre but is still the only guide you need.

Finishing ‘Hounds of Ash’, I remembered that I’ve actually had a copy on my Kindle for a few years. I really should have done myself a favour and read this book years ago but I’m very glad that I finally gave it a shot. When I think of awesome ‘Sword and Sorcery’ characters now, Fool Wolf will hold his own more than adequately amongst illustrious company. I suspect that there aren’t any new tales to read but I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope that changes.