It’s been a good summer for reading, the weather’s been too awful for much else – although in fact I have worked my socks off the past few months, and there hasn’t been a chance for travel. I thought I’d review some of thew books I’ve enjoyed in the past weeks, and this has been a big favourite. The cover is brilliant and it’s a perfect read for Young Adults who want a book with real edge. Here is writing so clear and cut glass sharp you believe every word. A fantastic story, with plenty of action and drama, but with depth and intensity too.
Wolf Blood is set in first century Britain, when Roman legions and Celtic tribes were at war. It’s also a world where the old religion of the Druids still has power. This is a world of gods and shapeshifters, where werewolves are as real and deadly as any crack Roman legion.
Celt Trista is a warrior and seer, an independent and ferocious heroine who can take on any man in battle. On the run from enslavement she meets Morcant, a Roman soldier cut off from his legion, a man who has his own secrets.
Wolf Blood is a really good, involving read, the battles are fierce and bloody and the paranormal elements read just as real and true.
I met N.M. Browne and asked her one question about her book, I had loads (including what happend to Trista and Morcant next) but the book is such a brilliantly imagined world I wanted to know which came first, the characters or the world?
This is what she said…
Ah the answer isn’t very useful – they always come together!I never write a character without a setting or a place without a person in it. It is also true that I like first century British history so when I started the story of an enslaved woman in a roundhouse I decided that it would take place in the first century. I didn’t know Morcant was going to be a werewolf for some time and I didn’t know about the wild weird for even longer.The woman wasn’t Trista either, but someone quite different whose name I’ve forgotten – she was an older woman, a midwife and she escaped with a baby. I didn’t pursue her because I couldn’t easily imagine having adventures with a baby and, as a mother, I knew worry about the baby would take over the story.I had almost given up on the idea completely, I had a place and a person but no real plot, when Morcant turned round unexpectedly at the fireside of my mind’s eye and when he flashed his yellow eyes I knew what he was and the story was saved.
Readers often imagine writers sitting down and deciding, rather clinically what I will write next, and although I have to admit I have done that myself, sometimes it’s different, just the way Nicky describes it, sort of staring and thinking of nothing and just imagining….
WOLF BLOOD is published by Bloomsbury, £6.99 ISBN 978-1408812556