Review will contain spoilers for For the Wolf.
For the Wolf was an excellent debut, even if the marketing of it as a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood is almost entirely baseless. My main complaint with For the Wolf was the Neve interludes; nearly every Neve chapter just left me eager to get back to Red as soon as possible.
Given that, I had trepidations about this book. I was pretty certain it was going to be an inverse of For the Wolf (because of the title, and the cover art, and the fact that it’s a duology, and the fact that it’s about twins, and the way the first book ended … wasn’t hard to figure out really) which meant that Neve was going to be front & center.
The first part of the book dragged a bit because of this. Red had such great character development in the first book that I kept wanting to go back to her story even though Neve’s story was objectively more interesting. In other words, my expectations from the first book made it hard for me to be fair to this one.
Fortunately I was able to get over that. Neve’s character gets all the development that she was lacking in the first book, and a story that manages to both mirror Red’s and still be unpredictable. In particular, what made me really turn the corner on Neve was that she takes a hard look at her behavior in the first book and sees things clearly. I love a good moment of self-realization.
The one real weakness this book has, I think, is Solmir. (This is all on the back of the book, so it’s not a spoiler.) Solmir is determined to bring about the end of the Shadowlands and destroy the Kings, and he is Neve’s one ally in the Shadowlands despite everything he did in For the Wolf. Given his role in the story, Solmir obviously can’t be a dyed-in-the-wool villain. His relationship with Neve is complex, and (I think) his character development goes further than events can really support.
But that complaint is minor. This is an excellent duology: dark, creative, extraordinarily atmospheric, with a very mature view of romantic relationships, and (a rare thing) a recognition that other types of love can be just as powerful.
My ARC (thank, Orbit!) came with an excerpt from Whitten’s next series. I was prepared to pick it up based purely on this duology, but the preview was intriguing. Looking forward to whatever Whitten has in store for us in the future.
Comes out June 9th.
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