Wolf's Blood, book review. (E.L.Johnson)

Confession time.

I know the author of this book personally, so I am going to start by conveying my greatest respects to her in managing to do what so many of us dream of but have yet to manage: getting her book published. Congratulations Erin.

Okay, that aside I can now tell you all what I thought of the book and being objective in the face of the above is no easy task, but I need to be, as all writers (myself included) need to hear the good the bad and the ugly if we're to improve on our craft - if improvement is necessary of course.

Set in England at a time where women are persecuted as witches and either drowned or burnt alive, we have a missing girl, a boy who appears to have lost his genitals, a reluctant monk, a man parading as a Priest and our hero of the piece, the witch-hunter Harold Eastman.

The book is mainly set in a small village presided over by a powerful landowner, but with stories of his deceased wife and his hasty union with the relative stranger that helped nurse her in her dying days, floating around, along with slander, a general distrust of strangers and a frightful fear of God, the scene is never dull.

Having been attacked by a wolf on their journey from the monastery to the village, Harold is taken in by a local medicine woman whose gentle herbal remedies raise suspicions amongst the villagers, but she soon has him back on his feet, and with a sham priest to expose, a house of God to repair and a witch to be found, not a minute too soon one might say.

The fast-paced nature of the wolf attack, the harvest festival celebration and the exposure of the witch at the end, balances nicely with the otherwise calm peaceful and very believable view of what life might have been like in rural England, circa eight hundred years ago.

The choice of language felt right, as did the tools and implements people used, along with their clothing, even down to the way the ladies and girls wore their hair, and with Teeth, Harold Eastman's trusty steed, being a character in his own right, it made for a very convincing story.

I rarely read novels set in this time period (Ishiguro's, The Buried Giant, being one exception) but I'm glad I read this one and can recommend it to all, even more so if you like historic fiction.

Three and a half stars for Wolf's Blood then, and I understand there are more to come so I'll keep you folks posted when they do.