Wolfsangel

By M D Lachlan

I've been a fan of Pilar Alessandra's 'On The Page' screenwriting podcast for a couple of years, she has great guests, gets right to the heart of whatever the subject is and the stuff that gets surfaced is always really insightful and really useful but best of all she makes it really fun.

Wolfs Angel by M.D. Lachlan
But Authin will not be denied an heir and, acting on a prophecy of the witches of the Troll Wall, he leads a raid across the sea to a Saxon village to snatch a new-born infant he can raise as his own. But instead of a single child he finds twins, two boys, and not caring to choose, he takes them both along with their mother.

Leaving his men to their deaths so that no-one will know what he has done Authin takes the twins, Vali and Feilig, and their mother to the witches. One is taken by them, to be brought up first by berserkers, where he learns to fight and build and make fire, then by a wolf-man, living among the wolves, barley speaking and hunting by smell, killing with his bare hands, where he becomes hard, tough and capable. The other is brought up as the son of a king, taught to hunt and sail, to fight, learning weapons and tactics in a much more orthodox fashion but rather than grow into the warrior prince his father wants and his people need, he would rather spend his time with Adisla, a farm girl and the love of his life whom he would marry and settle with, if his father would allow it.

But the web connecting these two boys, their mother, the king and the queen of the witches is much more complex than any of them could know, and years later, beyond man's petty quarrels over love and power, the Gods are fighting a much greater fight, where these lives are about to collide and become entangled in ways none of them could understand and are powerless to stop.

Wolfsangel starts with as big a bang as any fantasy book possibly can, an opening mix of myth and magic, warriors and kings and bloody mayhem that gets knee-deep in limbs in short order. In fact if it had ended there I'd have declared it the best short story of the year and moved on, but happily it doesn't end there and as the story progresses it grows into a remarkable fantasy debut with all the hallmarks of a genre classic.

On the surface it's a decent fantasy novel of brothers separated at birth who share a common destiny, the main character Vali is likeable in that loveable rogue kind of way and his brother Feilig goes through such torments as a child/wolf that you can't help but route for him. Vali's extended family of farmers wives, his long-suffering tutor and his childhood sweetheart are all nicely drawn and when Vali has to go on his first raid, witnessing at first hand the unbridled violence of the berserkers - hired mercenaries - and the wanton bloodlust of so-called warriors as they kill old men and innocents, his disgust at their behaviour and hatred of that way of life feels just a bit too 'Disney perfect'.

What elevates Wolfsangel above the morass is the tale of dark magic and gods that underpins the fate of the twins. The Witch Queen, playing the mortals as puppets in her duel with the divinities is genuinely disturbing in places, the fact that she is an ancient living in a child's body doesn't help calm the mental image one iota, and her early encounter with Loki was both intriguing and unsettling . There will be more of the Gods, particularly Odin, in further books I hope as it's this multilayered fight by the Gods to break into the realm of mortal man that drives the whole tale.

As a standalone novel, Wolfsangel is a terrific read. The story crackles with excitement, the pacing is excellent, the violence brutal and bloody. The sinister edge that the magic brings to the proceedings mark this out as a series definitely worth watching, and as long as you haven't read too much of the marketing blurb beforehand there is a monumental plot twist in the middle of the book that will really throw you for a loop.

Lachlan's ambition and imagination are to be applauded, and it bodes well for a first-time fantasy writer that he can happily sit alongside Gollancz stablemates like Abercrombie, Deas and Sykes (also a debutant) and easily hold his own. Roll on book two.

Wolfsangel is published by Gollancz and is available from Blackwell and all good book stores.

M D Lachlan has a blog

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