BOOK REVIEW: The Wolves of Winter by Tyrell Johnson ★★★☆☆

WARNING. MINOR SPOILERS.
Forget the old days. Forget summer. Forget warmth. Forget anything that doesn’t help you survive in the endless white wilderness beyond the edges of a fallen world.
Lynn McBride has learned much since society collapsed in the face of nuclear war and the relentless spread of disease. As the memories of her old life continue to haunt, she’s been forced to forge ahead in the snow-drifted Canadian Yukon, learning how to hunt and trap and slaughter.
But her fragile existence is about to be shattered. Shadows of the world before have found her tiny community—most prominently in the enigmatic figure of Jax, who brings with him dark secrets of the past and sets in motion a chain of events that will call Lynn to a role she never imagined.

This was undoubtedly a hyped-up book. I was sucked into reading it because there were five-star reviews everywhere and so what did I have to lose, right? I wold have blindly given The Wolves of Winter full stars, but the more I read, the more I realised that it was beginning to sound whiney, and predictable.

"I exist as I am, that is enough."

It’s mostly a post-apocalyptic tale with elements of dystopia setting. We follow a twenty-three-year-old, skilled hunter and survivor, Gwendolyn “Lynn” McBride, who for seven years has been living in a Canadian frozen Yukon landscape. She lives with her mother, her brother Ken, uncle Jeryl and Ramsey – the son of Jeryl’s deceased best friend. They live in a small commune; survivors of a nuclear war and a virus has wiped out most of the population. One day she stumbles upon a strange man with unique abilities wandering the woods. Unaccustomed to strangers, the stranger’s appearance raises some questions and concerns from the survivors. He has enemies and a secret he’s desperate to hide. Lynn could be civilization’s last hope.

What I did like about The Wolves of Winter was more to do with the themes, once you overlook Lynn’s first-person irritating narrative. It is a tale of a heroic young woman who crosses a frozen landscape to find her destiny, searching for the answer to who she’s meant to be and a frightening vision of a merciless new world in which desperation rules. A story of humanity that’s pushed beyond its breaking point and of family bonds of love forged when everything is lost.

Johnson's writing style is very accessible and easy to read, although I’m not sure who his intended reader would be? It reads like a typical Young Adult novel, but Lynn is older, so I guess it’s a New Adult read, with splashes of Walt Whitman’s poetry. But that’s about it. I wanted to like this book and I was promised many things that sadly wasn’t delivered. The was plenty of room for story, plot and character development, but it felt rushed in one sense and slow when executed.

Grief never goes away. It just changes. Grief isn’t the footprints in the snow. It’s the empty space between them.

I like reading book about strong female characters who have flaws (because let’s face it, humans have flaws, and baggage’s). Lynn McBride is a young woman who’s motivated by survival. She’s practical in a sense, yet she needs a man to save her. See, I wanted to like her, because I could relate to her with the grief of losing her father.

I was promised a bad-ass heroine but what we have is Lynn going ‘OMG there’s a man!’ when she sees the stranger. She sounds like a horny sixteen year old. I understand; there are no schools, no peers to interact with, no movies, television or books, no one to simulate her mind and body, academically-wise. What is a girl to do? Plus, we are reminded that Lynn prefers to be called Lynn and not Gwendolyn or even Gwen, because it sounds strange to her. Personally, I could not care less.

So far, I was interested in the science element of the nuclear snowstorm, the environment, how the small community survived. But Lynn’s self-pity, and complaining that she was related to all the men she lived with and thus could not satisfy her sexual urges. Yes, you heard it. Once she sees this non-blood related human man, Jax, she just invites him and his dog into her home. I mean, for all we know he could be a serial killer. Talk about jeopardizing her entire family all because her sex drives on an all-time high.

Johnson made it out that Lynn should feel an attraction to Jax solely on the basis of ‘he happened to be a stranger who was not related to her and so he should be up for up for procreating’. The main character doesn’t need a romantic love interest to make the story interesting, it could so do without it. Which makes me think, would The Wolves of Winter be any different if it were written by a woman? At times Lynn felt like a woman written by a man who did not know how to write about women. No disrespect to the author, but I just couldn’t understand Lynn’s motivations.

In the end, it's funny how little we need to get by. Snow, moose, potatoes, carrots, the company of a few good people. It's amazing how little we need to survive. And not just survive, but live.

There were some pretty clichés, dragged from every YA dystopian book on the market (with the only expectation of it set in winter), which then made this book lack in originality, suspense and thrills. There was, in no particular order; an evil government conspiracy complete with a megalomaniacal doctor, a love triangle, the runaway genetic experiment who happens to be the good guy, the awfully fat guy who turns out to be a sexual predator, and Lynn discovering she’s the cure.

It wasn’t a bad book, but a certain type of reader would appreciate it. While I may not have enjoyed the novel, it was very easy to read. Perhaps with some practice with plot and character development, there's some potential for his next book. At least I like Walt Whitman’s poetry.

Rating: 3/5
Publishers: HarperCollins
Publication date: January 11th 2018
Genre: Science Fiction/New Adult /Post-Apocalyptic