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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Feb 2005, 295 pages
Paperback:
Feb 2006, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
BookBrowse Review Team
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Six thousand years ago. Evil stalks the land. Only twelve-year-old Torak and his wolf-cub companion can defeat it. Their journey together takes them through deep forests, across giant glaciers, and into dangers they never imagined. Ages 9+.
Six thousand years ago. Evil stalks the land. Only twelve-year-old Torak and
his wolf-cub companion can defeat it. Their journey together takes them through
deep forests, across giant glaciers, and into dangers they never imagined.
In this page-turning, original, and spectacularly told adventure story, Torak
and Wolf are joined by an incredible cast of characters as they battle to save
their world, in this first book in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness.
Chapter One
Torak woke with a jolt from a sleep he'd never meant to
have.
The fire had burned low. He crouched in the fragile shell of
light and peered into the looming blackness of the Forest. He couldn't see
anything. Couldn't hear anything. Had it come back? Was it out there now,
watching him with its hot, murderous eyes?
He felt hollow and cold. He knew that he badly needed food,
and that his arm hurt, and his eyes were scratchy with tiredness, but he
couldn't really feel it. All night he'd guarded the wreck of the
spruce bough shelter and watched his father bleed. How could this be
happening?
Only yesterday—yesterday—they'd pitched camp in
the blue autumn dusk. Torak had made a joke, and his father was laughing. Then
the Forest exploded. Ravens screamed. Pines cracked. And out of the dark
beneath the trees surged a deeper darkness: a huge rampaging menace in bear
form.
Suddenly death was upon ...
Since the age of ten, Michelle Paver has dreamed about running with wild
wolves in the prehistoric forest; but growing up in London her options were
limited! She grew up and became a lawyer, but chucked it in to write
books for adults (including The Shadow Catcher and Fever Hill),
then one day she came across her long discarded story notes about a boy and
a wolf and all her childhood obsessions came flooding back!
Wolf Brother is the first in a planned six part adventure set 6,000
years ago in the forests of Northern Europe. It's a fantastic
adventure set in a meticulously researched world of hunter-gatherers, which
as Paver comments is a misleading term that conjures up a picture of someone
casually spotting a clump of berries and saying, 'Oh, good, I think I'll
gather some of those'. In reality, hunter-gatherers were unbelievably skilled
(a point also made by Jared Diamond in his classic Guns,
Germs and Steel, in which, if I recollect correctly, he makes a
compelling case that as a result of natural selection and their environment,
the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea are, on average, more intelligent
than so called 'first world*' inhabitants).
We've been reading Wolf Brother as a family and we're all hooked. I
highly recommend this series for ages 9 through to teenagers. Most
reviewers seem to feel that it wouldn't be of interest to those over the age
of about 14, but I think that's a little restrictive. This first book
lays the groundwork for a classic adventure/quest, coming of
age story - and as such, I think, would hold appeal for many
teens. ..continued
Full Review
(361 words)
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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).
To research this series, Paver spent time with a guide in the forests of Finland (some Finnish forests are still much as they would have been 6,000 years ago). She learned how the people lived by studying archaeology; and to understand what they might have thought she studied many groups including:
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