Blacktail A Novel

I really liked the story of Blacktail and his journey of revenge. Blacktail is still a young wolf when he loses his mother and siblings because of hunters. Later, he finds a mate, Renren, but humans kill her and their pups. From that point on, Blacktail is driven by rage and starts his journey of revenge against humans. Along the way, he travels through different areas, meets other animals and comes across their stories. Sometimes he helps them, sometimes he kills them. There is also another storyline about an ancient god of the forest that Blacktail needs to find and awaken. I really liked the animal POVs. It was fascinating to see humans and our behavior through the eyes of wild animals. The book also has some interesting commentary about what the world could look like if animals were the ones with power over humans instead of the other way around. The cruelty towards animals was sometimes really heartbreaking, especially because the author didn’t have to force emotional scenes to make them impactful. The things I didn’t like as much were the dialogue between the animals, which sometimes felt really weird to me, especially the wording. I also liked the idea behind the gods, but not really how they were portrayed. And I found the ending quite confusing. Overall, though, I thought it was a good story with some interesting ideas and commentary. It is also quite brutal, with quite a few scenes involving animal cruelty and animals dying. I didn’t have a problem reading it myself, but if you struggle with those topics, definitely keep that in mind before picking this one up.