Book Review: The Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable

(Before continuing, I would like to say, spoilers are imminent. So, if you do NOT want your reading experience for this amazing book to be ruined, I recommend you to press the 'exit' button!)

Now, with that out of they way...

If you haven't been catching up lately, I was finally getting back into the reading groove, and picked out The Wolf Princess by Cathryn Constable as my first back-to-reading material!

And since I'm starting this old hobby of mine back again, why not try something new? Reviewing!

So, again, as repeated by many others before me:

This is all purely my own views and preferences. This is not based to hurt, harm, or destroy the reputation of someone else. Again, this is based on my reading experiences, with reading itself being subjective!

And now that I covered most of the disclaimers and warnings, let us begin this, shall we?

(i) Short Summary

The storyline starts off with a young girl named Sophie Smith, an orphan student at Bloomsbury College for Young Ladies. She is still trying to grapple with the lost of his poet father, while struggling to have barely any connection to her guardian, Rosemary, which travels extensively and doesn't stay in one spot permanently, which makes it even harder for Sophie to trace out her guardian's location.

Sophie has two friends (presumably the ONLY two friends), wealthy, fashion-lover and French-rooted Delphine along with the intelligent, smart, and witty Marianne. As the story progresses, it is observable to see Sophie's poor family background, along with her unknown, or strained family roots.

All this changes, when a mysterious female figure originating from Russia, visits the school in search of someone. And when she found Sophie, it was like fate. And soon, Sophie (and unexpectedly, her friends Delphine and Marianne) were invited to visit Saint Petersburg, Russia.

When they arrive, they were greeted by a 'very late' Dr. Galina Starova. The group boards a train, expecting to arrive at this strange Doctor's residences. Instead, they were left on the train with the doctor disappearing, and later, kicked out of the train itself, and into the forest snow, where an abandoned train stop stood covered in snow.

The three were lucky to find a Hunter's cabin nearby where the fireplace still burned and the kettle still steaming. Stranded for the night, they slept if off with Sophie doing most of the night-watch in alert for the cabin's owner's arrival. But sleep was cut off, when a figure named Ivan Ivanovich, the majordomo of the Volkonsky Winter Palace, informs them of their invitation to said palace by a Princess Anna Feodorovna Volkonskaya, the last descendant of the nearly decimated Volkonsky Family. And later, they board a train that leads them towards a ruined palace with its windows shattered and multiple age-showing descriptions. Definitely not something the girls were expecting from a palace!

Thinking this as an innocent trip, the girls try to enjoy the vacation-like trip. But things go awry when the princess exhibits weird reactions, unusually cold actions and whatnot. And slowly, mysteries of long-lost history come up throughout the stay, especially for Sophie's family roots.

(I shall stop here to not entirely spoil the book. Read it yourself!)

(ii) My Overall Experience

This book has a pretty amazing plot-driven story overall. I enjoyed it, and the first impression I got from the first page sparked my interest in reading it!

Another thing, is that I didn't skip pages. Why? This is because all chapters are related, and vital to understanding the story. I won't say the book title, but a fantasy novel I read made me skip at least 3 chapters because said chapters were not connected to the plot at all!

But let's get into it more in depth with the pros and cons.

Starting with...

(ii)(a) Pros!

To start this off, the book had an amazing plot and an amazing start, that's for sure. But what's good about this, is that almost everything is vital and needed to understanding the story itself. Sophie's memories of her father, the dialogues, heck, even knife marks on the paintings of the Volkonsky Family had significance in the plot!

Secondly, one thing I absolutely love about this book is how descriptive, yet not overly-prosed it was. I find it very easy to read without needing to torture my mind in trying to decipher whatever was written to imagine the scene. Which is why, this is a definite recommendation from me for starter-readers, or readers that don't have a strong command of the english language!

Lastly, yet another thing is practically how the author just incorporated Russia into the story. She also clearly described the language barrier of a British-speaker to a Russian-speaker. This can be clearly shown during the dialogue between multiple russian-rooted side characters where none of the main characters could understand much of what they're saying. And I love that about this novel, since there are some books I have heard and seen to ignore this fact completely.

Now, that ends my pros. But definitely, there will be cons, since nothing is ever perfect. And sadly, there were a few thorns that stuck out the bushes like a sore thumb.

(ii)(b) Cons...

The number one lacking factor here is how I needed to flip back, or reread dialogues to know who's talking to who. This can be contributed to the fact the main characters, in particular, just sound the same altogether. A solution I can provide is by showing their personalities and attitudes through their dialogues. For example, Marianne can sound more secluded, reclusive, and careful, while Delphine can counter that with a more outspoken, pretentious, extrovert-like dialogue. With that, Sophie can sound much more unique! And speaking of characters...

On my perspective, I don't like how the two friends (Delphine and Marianne) are like background characters that aren't really included much into the story or contributing anything to the plot, almost as if they were background characters.

Similarly, many characters were just... left out, or appearing suddenly. For instance, Dr. Galina Starova just appears for 1-2 chapters and... disappears exactly how she just slips out from the train. It just felt weird to my opinion and a waste. And in the 'appearing suddenly' part, the General (unknown name) just comes out without warning or any indications. I think this could've been solved with more better planning for the characters part.

Finally, it's about the chapters. And yes, I didn't skip chapters because of how they're all each related to the plot, BUT, there were also occurrences where chapters don't feel connected, or just doesn't make sense. This can be observed in the chapter change between Chapter 11 and Chapter 12, where logically, after Princess Anna Feodorovna Volkonskaya shouted towards Delphine, Delphine would be emotionally affected, if you actually considered her impressionable personality. Instead, she was just acting nothing happened from the incident, and went ahead. That isn't how a normal person works! xD

(iii) Reflecting

Now, let's wrap this up.

This novel has an amazing setting, pretty good plot development and an overall amazing storyline that I would recommend to anyone with its simple writing style that is both beautiful, and easy for the eyes to read.

But, what is lacking is just the characters along with the issue of realism in their actions and attitudes, with their voices too needing to be more unique and easily differentiated to avoid confusion.

Nevertheless, even if the characters won't be something I would deem memorable for myself, the plot development in it will definitely be something I'll keep in mind during my writing sessions.

Anyway, this book, according to its publishing date, was 2012, 8 years ago since the time of this writing, so I am putting my confidence in some improvement of her much more recent works. With that, I look forward to reading more of Cathryn Constable's novels, and I thank her for creating, and making her world a reality for readers across the world to read!