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Wolfhound Century #1
Wolfhound Century
Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist -- and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police. A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists. Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head.
327 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 23, 2013
43 people are currently reading
1815 people want to read
About the author
Peter Higgins
44 books65 followersPeter Higgins is a British author. Wolfhound Century and Truth and Fear are published by Gollancz in the UK and Orbit in the US.
Peter's short fiction has appeared in Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007 and Best New Fantasy 2, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Zahir and Revelation, and in Russian translation in Esli.
Peter's short fiction has appeared in Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007 and Best New Fantasy 2, in Asimov’s Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Zahir and Revelation, and in Russian translation in Esli.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 199 reviews
November 26, 2013
This is the China Miévilliest book that was ever China Miévilled by someone other than China Miéville.
March 10, 2013
Read the Review Here: http://thefoundingfields.com/2013/03/....
“Very dark, very gritty and very atmospheric. Wolfhound Century is also a book free of genre constraints, allowing for a great original and entertaining read. Top Notch stuff by Peter Higgins.” ~The Founding Fields
Every so often you come across a book that is impossible to fit into a single genre, and Wolfhound Century hits that spot perfectly. It seems like a weird combination of alternate history, fantasy and the good old noir crime fiction as well – set in a world that is similar to 1940′s Russia. If you were looking for one of the most imaginative books of the year so far, then you’ve come to the right place.
"Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist — and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police.
A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists.
Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head."
The strongest aspect of Wolfhound Century is clearly Higgins’ worldbuilding. He’s captured a gritty world with one of the darkest tales that I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and I’ve read Warhammer 40,000 fiction – the setting that first coined the term grimdark. (I think). Don’t expect any heroes here, for Higgins’ characters are well developed, three-dimensional and very interesting, and Higgins has made them feel realistic enough to fit in the totalitarian state that he has created as a backdrop, and never does a character feel like he or she shouldn’t belong.
Whilst the book has a larger cast of characters than just the man mentioned on the blurb, Investigator Vissarion Lom is the story’s key man, summoned by a high ranking police official to catch a terrorist at the bequest of the head of the secret police. Lom is a great character and he manages to carry the book through the dark corners that Higgins takes us. It becomes clear that one of the main themes in this book is fear, fear of the Secret Police, and this is one of the many reasons that helps connect Wolfhound Century to its 1940′s Russia setting. The pace is fast, and if you enjoy Wolfhound Century then you won’t be able to put it down, for the chapters are almost James Patterson-level short in places, allowing that “One More Chapter” thing to really kick in even though you know you have to get off the bus soon (If my bus stop was not the last stop on my journey, I would have missed it – I was that engrossed in Wolfhound Century), allowing for a great read.
The writing style of Peter Higgins is fantastic and if Wolfhound Century is anything to go by then I will stick around to see more of what Higgins puts out – he’s a great writer and has really captured the fact that fantasy doesn’t have to be set on a completely invented world nor in our own reality to be enjoyable – alternate history/fantasy is a much under used genre that I am now wishing to explore in more depth to see if there are other books like Wolfhound Century out there.
This could very well end up being in my list of Top 25 books of 2013, and it’s certainly going to be one of the weirdest novels that I’ve read this year - Wolfhound Century is engaging, enthralling and this is a ride that you’ll want to get on board for. Fans of noir, classic spy thrillers, and fantasy fans will want to get on board on this book and whilst its dark tone may not be for everyone It comes with a high recommendation from me.
VERDICT: 4/5
“Very dark, very gritty and very atmospheric. Wolfhound Century is also a book free of genre constraints, allowing for a great original and entertaining read. Top Notch stuff by Peter Higgins.” ~The Founding Fields
Every so often you come across a book that is impossible to fit into a single genre, and Wolfhound Century hits that spot perfectly. It seems like a weird combination of alternate history, fantasy and the good old noir crime fiction as well – set in a world that is similar to 1940′s Russia. If you were looking for one of the most imaginative books of the year so far, then you’ve come to the right place.
"Investigator Vissarion Lom has been summoned to the capital in order to catch a terrorist — and ordered to report directly to the head of the secret police.
A totalitarian state, worn down by an endless war, must be seen to crush home-grown insurgents with an iron fist. But Lom discovers Mirgorod to be more corrupted than he imagined: a murky world of secret police and revolutionaries, cabaret clubs and doomed artists.
Lom has been chosen because he is an outsider, not involved in the struggle for power within the party. And because of the sliver of angel stone implanted in his head."
The strongest aspect of Wolfhound Century is clearly Higgins’ worldbuilding. He’s captured a gritty world with one of the darkest tales that I’ve had the pleasure of reading, and I’ve read Warhammer 40,000 fiction – the setting that first coined the term grimdark. (I think). Don’t expect any heroes here, for Higgins’ characters are well developed, three-dimensional and very interesting, and Higgins has made them feel realistic enough to fit in the totalitarian state that he has created as a backdrop, and never does a character feel like he or she shouldn’t belong.
Whilst the book has a larger cast of characters than just the man mentioned on the blurb, Investigator Vissarion Lom is the story’s key man, summoned by a high ranking police official to catch a terrorist at the bequest of the head of the secret police. Lom is a great character and he manages to carry the book through the dark corners that Higgins takes us. It becomes clear that one of the main themes in this book is fear, fear of the Secret Police, and this is one of the many reasons that helps connect Wolfhound Century to its 1940′s Russia setting. The pace is fast, and if you enjoy Wolfhound Century then you won’t be able to put it down, for the chapters are almost James Patterson-level short in places, allowing that “One More Chapter” thing to really kick in even though you know you have to get off the bus soon (If my bus stop was not the last stop on my journey, I would have missed it – I was that engrossed in Wolfhound Century), allowing for a great read.
The writing style of Peter Higgins is fantastic and if Wolfhound Century is anything to go by then I will stick around to see more of what Higgins puts out – he’s a great writer and has really captured the fact that fantasy doesn’t have to be set on a completely invented world nor in our own reality to be enjoyable – alternate history/fantasy is a much under used genre that I am now wishing to explore in more depth to see if there are other books like Wolfhound Century out there.
This could very well end up being in my list of Top 25 books of 2013, and it’s certainly going to be one of the weirdest novels that I’ve read this year - Wolfhound Century is engaging, enthralling and this is a ride that you’ll want to get on board for. Fans of noir, classic spy thrillers, and fantasy fans will want to get on board on this book and whilst its dark tone may not be for everyone It comes with a high recommendation from me.
VERDICT: 4/5
January 7, 2016
Received to review via Netgalley
There’s something compelling about Wolfhound Century; when people talk about the beautiful style and language, they’re quite right. And the comparisons to Miéville are also, I think, fair. My issue was that it was all weirdly half-familiar — sort of Russian, sort of a mystery, sort of a thriller — and I couldn’t catch hold of any of it to really follow a thread through the story. Lom is okay as a character, but he feels empty, like a cipher. That doesn’t really get any better for me over the course of the book, and… generally everything else gave me that same impression.
For me, there were so many bits I wanted more of — the forest creature/s — and bits I just didn’t enjoy, like pretty much anything relating to the angels, because they seemed so devoid of explanation.
In the end, I have to confess I gave up and skimmed. Miéville has to catch me in the right mood, too, so I might be willing to try again some other time. But I really didn’t get into it, despite wanting to and finding the writing itself compelling.
Originally posted here.
There’s something compelling about Wolfhound Century; when people talk about the beautiful style and language, they’re quite right. And the comparisons to Miéville are also, I think, fair. My issue was that it was all weirdly half-familiar — sort of Russian, sort of a mystery, sort of a thriller — and I couldn’t catch hold of any of it to really follow a thread through the story. Lom is okay as a character, but he feels empty, like a cipher. That doesn’t really get any better for me over the course of the book, and… generally everything else gave me that same impression.
For me, there were so many bits I wanted more of — the forest creature/s — and bits I just didn’t enjoy, like pretty much anything relating to the angels, because they seemed so devoid of explanation.
In the end, I have to confess I gave up and skimmed. Miéville has to catch me in the right mood, too, so I might be willing to try again some other time. But I really didn’t get into it, despite wanting to and finding the writing itself compelling.
Originally posted here.
August 8, 2013
Inspector Vissarion Lom is a cop, an incorruptible man frustrated with the oppressive bureaucracy and hypocrisy of the institution he serves, trapped in an unimportant provincial precinct and denied the promotions he thinks he deserves. Josef Kantor is a political revolutionary and a terrorist, utterly committed to his Cause, recently released from a twenty year stint in a forced labour camp and now causing endless trouble in the capital of Mirgorod. Lom is set on Kantor’s trail, hand-picked for the job because of his dogged talents but also because he is disconnected from the vicious factional politics and bureaucratic squabbles of the capital. Alone, in a strange city, Lom finds himself chasing a man who might be more dangerous than anyone thought.
For me, the setting was the real star of Wolfhound Century. This is a fantasy world that we so rarely see, a fresh and original creation. Comparisons to Mieville are not far off-base. Higgins has constructed a fascinating universe, a weird and warped place heavily inspired by Soviet Russia that I found myself eager to explore. The Vlast is a massive continent-wide confederation of supposedly compliant states ruled with an iron fist by the Novozhd, a Stalin-like figure whose benign, patriarchal demeanour contrasts sharply with the oppressive cruelty of his decades long rule. There’s Giants, golems, mountainous angels that fall from the sky and crash to earth where their dead flesh is mined for it’s wondrous properties, a moon broken in two, magical endless forests, and sleeping gods, but these fantastical elements exist comfortable alongside the mundane - run down ghettoes, violent politics, street muggers, noisy shipyards, social unrest, smokey night-clubs, a dirty but distant war reminiscent of Vietnam or Afghanistan. It’s a vivid and well-realised world, fantastical but grounded.
I found that the plot and the setting tended to take precedence over characterisation. This isn’t a criticism, the characters are hardly bland or one-note, just an observation that they take a bit of a backseat to the action. Lom himself is an interesting twist on the classic noir anti-hero. Due to his job, he’s a symbol of oppressive authority, feared and hated, but he’s also shockingly naive in many ways. Despite the awful and gruesome things he’s seen in the course of his work, Lom views the world fairly simple terms. For Lom, the world has good guys and bad guys, and cops? Well, they’re the good guys. It isn’t that Lom is a fanatic, utterly wedded to the ideology of the State, but more that he is so removed from normal life, and so totally married to his job, that he’s simply been able to ignore the horrible crimes perpetrated by the institution he loyally serves. Lom is actually surprised when, during the course of his manhunt, he encounters citizens who distrust him because of the uniform he wears. It’s a neat reversal of the usual world-weary cynical detective that one usually finds in a noir story, and transforms Lom from a sinister figure (he is a member of a fascistic secret police force after all) into an innocent and strangely vulnerable hero.
The writing is fast-paced and to-the-point. Short, sharp, snappy chapters build the momentum well. Occasionally I found the writing a little too choppy, scenes and chapters cut off a little early, or felt a bit rushed, but it settled into a nice rhythm after a while. And there’s no real ending. It’s very much the first book in a series, and the narrative kind of just crashes to a halt, rather than hitting a climax or resolving anything. It’s a bit of a shame to end such a strong debut novel on such an awkward, hanging note, but I’m willing to overlook it. It’s quite a good book, all in all, the kind of thing I’d really like to see more of.
For me, the setting was the real star of Wolfhound Century. This is a fantasy world that we so rarely see, a fresh and original creation. Comparisons to Mieville are not far off-base. Higgins has constructed a fascinating universe, a weird and warped place heavily inspired by Soviet Russia that I found myself eager to explore. The Vlast is a massive continent-wide confederation of supposedly compliant states ruled with an iron fist by the Novozhd, a Stalin-like figure whose benign, patriarchal demeanour contrasts sharply with the oppressive cruelty of his decades long rule. There’s Giants, golems, mountainous angels that fall from the sky and crash to earth where their dead flesh is mined for it’s wondrous properties, a moon broken in two, magical endless forests, and sleeping gods, but these fantastical elements exist comfortable alongside the mundane - run down ghettoes, violent politics, street muggers, noisy shipyards, social unrest, smokey night-clubs, a dirty but distant war reminiscent of Vietnam or Afghanistan. It’s a vivid and well-realised world, fantastical but grounded.
I found that the plot and the setting tended to take precedence over characterisation. This isn’t a criticism, the characters are hardly bland or one-note, just an observation that they take a bit of a backseat to the action. Lom himself is an interesting twist on the classic noir anti-hero. Due to his job, he’s a symbol of oppressive authority, feared and hated, but he’s also shockingly naive in many ways. Despite the awful and gruesome things he’s seen in the course of his work, Lom views the world fairly simple terms. For Lom, the world has good guys and bad guys, and cops? Well, they’re the good guys. It isn’t that Lom is a fanatic, utterly wedded to the ideology of the State, but more that he is so removed from normal life, and so totally married to his job, that he’s simply been able to ignore the horrible crimes perpetrated by the institution he loyally serves. Lom is actually surprised when, during the course of his manhunt, he encounters citizens who distrust him because of the uniform he wears. It’s a neat reversal of the usual world-weary cynical detective that one usually finds in a noir story, and transforms Lom from a sinister figure (he is a member of a fascistic secret police force after all) into an innocent and strangely vulnerable hero.
The writing is fast-paced and to-the-point. Short, sharp, snappy chapters build the momentum well. Occasionally I found the writing a little too choppy, scenes and chapters cut off a little early, or felt a bit rushed, but it settled into a nice rhythm after a while. And there’s no real ending. It’s very much the first book in a series, and the narrative kind of just crashes to a halt, rather than hitting a climax or resolving anything. It’s a bit of a shame to end such a strong debut novel on such an awkward, hanging note, but I’m willing to overlook it. It’s quite a good book, all in all, the kind of thing I’d really like to see more of.
January 10, 2014
I picked this up because it was described a being very similar in style to China Mieville.
It was - but I don't think it felt derivative at all.
It was sort of like if Mieville met Martin Cruz Smith met Philip Kerr. It may sound strange, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all.
Set in an alternate Soviet state, Vissarion Lom is a 'good' cop, who sees it as an unexpected opportunity when he's called to the capital to undertake a secret investigation. But of course - he gets into far more than he expected, and ends up questioning everything he thought he knew about himself and his society.
Higgins does a great job of creating his dark and atmospheric world, and weaving in mythological and original fantasy and science-fiction elements. (And really, just some wonderfully weird and grotesque things...) I'm impressed.
I'll be picking up the sequel... and yes, it is all too obvious that there will be a sequel, but I liked it enough that I'm deducting no points for the cliffhanger-ish ending.
It was - but I don't think it felt derivative at all.
It was sort of like if Mieville met Martin Cruz Smith met Philip Kerr. It may sound strange, but I don't think it's a bad thing at all.
Set in an alternate Soviet state, Vissarion Lom is a 'good' cop, who sees it as an unexpected opportunity when he's called to the capital to undertake a secret investigation. But of course - he gets into far more than he expected, and ends up questioning everything he thought he knew about himself and his society.
Higgins does a great job of creating his dark and atmospheric world, and weaving in mythological and original fantasy and science-fiction elements. (And really, just some wonderfully weird and grotesque things...) I'm impressed.
I'll be picking up the sequel... and yes, it is all too obvious that there will be a sequel, but I liked it enough that I'm deducting no points for the cliffhanger-ish ending.
February 4, 2024
Detektīvs Vissarion Lom negaidīti tiek izsaukts no attāla rajona centra uz galvaspilsētu Mirgorod. Negaidīti, bet varbūt vides maiņa pat nāktu par labu, jo nesen nogalinājis/saucis pie atbildības slepkavnieciski noskaņotu kolēģi. Un kaut arī nozieguma atklāšana pārsvarā uzskatāma par labu lietu, tad savējo aiztikšana ne tik, pat ja izdarīta slepkavība.
https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202...
https://poseidons99.wordpress.com/202...
August 8, 2013
WOLFHOUND CENTURY is a promising debut novel, both well conceived and original. It's a fantasy world based on the Soviet Union under Stalin (although I noted a couple of references to Hitler as well), run on cruel magics of brute power and domination, faced off against the remnants of an older magical force apparently based on Slavic folk tales. It's an interesting and original world that I would have liked to see explored in more depth. Higgins is also a smart enough writer to make both his hero (Vissarion Lom, a sensitive officer of the secret police in the mold of THE LIVES OF OTHERS) and his villain (Josef Kantor, a megalomaniac with dangerous charisma) both essentially products of the cruel system into which they were born.
But while Higgins was good at conceiving his novel, I had a couple of strong problems with his execution. First, there's a major flaw in the world-building--none of the characters, not even the secret police, seem nearly paranoid enough in their day-to-day behavior to fit a book that's supposed to evoke the Stalinist purges. The terror of the system that the characters lived under often seems notional rather than actual. Secondly, the main characters are well conceived, but their backstory isn't well integrated in their current character arcs. Kantor is established as a survivor of a gulag equivalent, but this attitude doesn't do enough to distinguish him from a standard power-mad Big Bad. His charisma also seems under-dramatized, and I would liked to see what made him appealing to other people.
While this meant that WOLFHOUND CENTURY never quite rose above the level of 'interesting,' I appreciated that Peter Higgins was trying for something more than standard fantasy, and I look forward to seeing if he can achieve his ambition in subsequent volumes.
But while Higgins was good at conceiving his novel, I had a couple of strong problems with his execution. First, there's a major flaw in the world-building--none of the characters, not even the secret police, seem nearly paranoid enough in their day-to-day behavior to fit a book that's supposed to evoke the Stalinist purges. The terror of the system that the characters lived under often seems notional rather than actual. Secondly, the main characters are well conceived, but their backstory isn't well integrated in their current character arcs. Kantor is established as a survivor of a gulag equivalent, but this attitude doesn't do enough to distinguish him from a standard power-mad Big Bad. His charisma also seems under-dramatized, and I would liked to see what made him appealing to other people.
While this meant that WOLFHOUND CENTURY never quite rose above the level of 'interesting,' I appreciated that Peter Higgins was trying for something more than standard fantasy, and I look forward to seeing if he can achieve his ambition in subsequent volumes.
March 27, 2013
You may also read my review here: http://www.mybookishways.com/2013/03/...
Vissarion Lom of the Podchornok provincial police, has tried many times to get transferred to the capital city of the great Vlast, Mirgorod. He eventually gets his wish, but when he arrives, he finds out that he’s been summoned to catch a revolutionary by the name of Josef Kantor. Kantor, an “impresario of destruction”, is responsible for countless lives lost and horrendous atrocities in the name of freedom, and he’s also a ghost; a legend, an enigma, and a man shrouded in mystery. It’s made very clear to Lom, upon his arrival in Mirgorod, that he will be on his own in seeking Kantor, with no help from the police. He seeks out an old friend, a professor named Raku Vishnik, with whom he parted ways with when Raku went to university and Lom stayed in Podchornok to join the police. Eventually the university fired Raku after finding out about his family and his connection to artists and poets, and now he is the official historian of Mirgorod. He wanders the streets of the city with his camera, photographing the things that can’t be seem, the universe underneath of Mirgorod. Raku is welcoming to Lom, and Lom settles in with his old friend to get to work in finding a terrorist. Lom soon finds out that Mirgorod is a very dangerous place, and that he’s under threat by much more than just Kantor and his band of murderous revolutionaries. Amongst the death that hovers over Mirgorod like a haze is the Archangel, fallen from the stars, mired in the woods, a stone monolith with an alien intelligence… and it’s awakening.
Lom is much more than a policeman, and possibly much more than a man. Angels have been falling to earth for centuries, and humans have been taking pieces of their stone bodies and using them for “enhancements”. Lom has a piece of angel stone implanted in his head (placed there as a child) and sometimes he gets glimpses of another world, one lying just beneath the one he lives in, and at times, seems to exhibit certain powers. The Pollandore is the world that might be, that hasn’t been, and Kantor wants it destroyed, but he’s not the only one. Laverentina Chazia, Commander of the Secret Police, also wants to see it destroyed, and she’ll go to any means to do it. It’s up to Lom and a young woman, Maroussia, whose past lies in the dense forests surrounding Mirgorod, to save the past, as well as a future without constant war and bloodshed.
Peter Higgins has taken an alternate Russia rife with squalid alleyways, secret police, cabarets where artists gather to discuss their forbidden work and indulge in equally forbidden behavior, and thrown in fallen angels and pocket universes for good measure. I can’t forget to mention the rusalkas (water ghosts or nymphs), giants that are used as slaves, and the Gaukh Engine, which is the machine of steel and electricity that is the heart of the city’s archives. While Wolfhound Century tackles some pretty big ideas and themes (among them, transhumanism and cosmism ), the author has cleverly wrapped these ideas up into a story about a man, and a woman, who came from nothing, but are destined for greater things, and where myth and reality are sometimes indistinguishable. Wonderfully atmospheric and alive, not unlike the verdant, sentient forest that surrounds Mirgorod, and beautifully written, Wolfhound Century is equal parts nightmare and dreamscape, and what a dream. If you find yourself getting confused about the role of angel flesh and how it works, don’t worry, all will be revealed at the end. Speaking of the end, it’ll knock your socks off, and leave you hoping for the next book very, very soon. Wolfhound Century is a strange, complex, earthy, sometimes violent read, and one of the best debuts I’ve gotten my hands on.
Vissarion Lom of the Podchornok provincial police, has tried many times to get transferred to the capital city of the great Vlast, Mirgorod. He eventually gets his wish, but when he arrives, he finds out that he’s been summoned to catch a revolutionary by the name of Josef Kantor. Kantor, an “impresario of destruction”, is responsible for countless lives lost and horrendous atrocities in the name of freedom, and he’s also a ghost; a legend, an enigma, and a man shrouded in mystery. It’s made very clear to Lom, upon his arrival in Mirgorod, that he will be on his own in seeking Kantor, with no help from the police. He seeks out an old friend, a professor named Raku Vishnik, with whom he parted ways with when Raku went to university and Lom stayed in Podchornok to join the police. Eventually the university fired Raku after finding out about his family and his connection to artists and poets, and now he is the official historian of Mirgorod. He wanders the streets of the city with his camera, photographing the things that can’t be seem, the universe underneath of Mirgorod. Raku is welcoming to Lom, and Lom settles in with his old friend to get to work in finding a terrorist. Lom soon finds out that Mirgorod is a very dangerous place, and that he’s under threat by much more than just Kantor and his band of murderous revolutionaries. Amongst the death that hovers over Mirgorod like a haze is the Archangel, fallen from the stars, mired in the woods, a stone monolith with an alien intelligence… and it’s awakening.
Lom is much more than a policeman, and possibly much more than a man. Angels have been falling to earth for centuries, and humans have been taking pieces of their stone bodies and using them for “enhancements”. Lom has a piece of angel stone implanted in his head (placed there as a child) and sometimes he gets glimpses of another world, one lying just beneath the one he lives in, and at times, seems to exhibit certain powers. The Pollandore is the world that might be, that hasn’t been, and Kantor wants it destroyed, but he’s not the only one. Laverentina Chazia, Commander of the Secret Police, also wants to see it destroyed, and she’ll go to any means to do it. It’s up to Lom and a young woman, Maroussia, whose past lies in the dense forests surrounding Mirgorod, to save the past, as well as a future without constant war and bloodshed.
Peter Higgins has taken an alternate Russia rife with squalid alleyways, secret police, cabarets where artists gather to discuss their forbidden work and indulge in equally forbidden behavior, and thrown in fallen angels and pocket universes for good measure. I can’t forget to mention the rusalkas (water ghosts or nymphs), giants that are used as slaves, and the Gaukh Engine, which is the machine of steel and electricity that is the heart of the city’s archives. While Wolfhound Century tackles some pretty big ideas and themes (among them, transhumanism and cosmism ), the author has cleverly wrapped these ideas up into a story about a man, and a woman, who came from nothing, but are destined for greater things, and where myth and reality are sometimes indistinguishable. Wonderfully atmospheric and alive, not unlike the verdant, sentient forest that surrounds Mirgorod, and beautifully written, Wolfhound Century is equal parts nightmare and dreamscape, and what a dream. If you find yourself getting confused about the role of angel flesh and how it works, don’t worry, all will be revealed at the end. Speaking of the end, it’ll knock your socks off, and leave you hoping for the next book very, very soon. Wolfhound Century is a strange, complex, earthy, sometimes violent read, and one of the best debuts I’ve gotten my hands on.
March 21, 2014
How to describe this one? How to do it justice? In Soviet Russia reviews writes you! Anyway...
Yes, this book takes place in a world that is ours, or maybe it is not our world. We have a "Russia" turned "Soviet", ruled by a ruthless dictator, revolutionaries running around in the streets bombing stuff, a war with a place called The Archipelago, and that is all we learn of that. But that is only the beginning. There is a vast vast forest, there are creatures from Slavic mythology, there are Gods that left, and there was a war in the sky that broke the moon and made angels fall to earth and die. Their flesh used by scientist for their own gain, and one of those angels are still alive, huge, dark and hungry. Hey there was even "Finnish" giant. Now you might to understand that this was different.
In this fascinating world an investigator named Lom is brought to the capital to find a terrorist. Instead he finds a conspiracy bigger than anything he could have imagined. A city killing itself, earth moving beneath his feet and a world that needs to be saved.
So, it's a mystery, fantasy, alternate earth, detective story. Really different and honestly just cool.
Yes, this book takes place in a world that is ours, or maybe it is not our world. We have a "Russia" turned "Soviet", ruled by a ruthless dictator, revolutionaries running around in the streets bombing stuff, a war with a place called The Archipelago, and that is all we learn of that. But that is only the beginning. There is a vast vast forest, there are creatures from Slavic mythology, there are Gods that left, and there was a war in the sky that broke the moon and made angels fall to earth and die. Their flesh used by scientist for their own gain, and one of those angels are still alive, huge, dark and hungry. Hey there was even "Finnish" giant. Now you might to understand that this was different.
In this fascinating world an investigator named Lom is brought to the capital to find a terrorist. Instead he finds a conspiracy bigger than anything he could have imagined. A city killing itself, earth moving beneath his feet and a world that needs to be saved.
So, it's a mystery, fantasy, alternate earth, detective story. Really different and honestly just cool.
January 20, 2013
This book has everything: giants, angels, mystery, crime; all based in a timeless world that appears to be run like Russia was in the last century. Morals abound. Strange creatures appear. Good tries to overcome evil.
Peter Higgins draws you in to the world where strange creatures are accepted as everyday occurrences. There are several subplots all neatly tied together. Inspector Vissarion Lom is hunting for a terrorist, but he uncovers something more sinister. The World he knows is about to change.
He meets up with an old childhood friend and gets drawn into something greater than a terrorist plot.
If you like Noir, Sci-Fi, thrillers, alternate history books, you’ll enjoy this. A word of warning though, when you get to the last page, it isn’t. This book ends as if it is the first chapter of a much greater novel. I can only assume that book two is rapidly being written because I am dying to find out what happens next.
Peter Higgins draws you in to the world where strange creatures are accepted as everyday occurrences. There are several subplots all neatly tied together. Inspector Vissarion Lom is hunting for a terrorist, but he uncovers something more sinister. The World he knows is about to change.
He meets up with an old childhood friend and gets drawn into something greater than a terrorist plot.
If you like Noir, Sci-Fi, thrillers, alternate history books, you’ll enjoy this. A word of warning though, when you get to the last page, it isn’t. This book ends as if it is the first chapter of a much greater novel. I can only assume that book two is rapidly being written because I am dying to find out what happens next.
November 7, 2020
I don't strictly know that I'm qualified to review this book, given that I only have a surface-level understanding of the history of the Soviet Union and can't speak to the cultural themes Higgins is drawing on here, but damn if I didn't enjoy reading it.
The plot hook is that in fantasy not-USSR, an unpopular inspector from a rural area is called into the capital of the not-USSR to find a revolutionary leader and report on him. Immediately there are strange things about the setting: the capital is not not-Moscow, but actually not-Saint Petersburg, judging from its location at the mouth of the sea on swampy marshland.
Other things abound: the presence of dead angels, their flesh implanted into children and molded into golems. Stranger things. Sentient rain. The walking spirit of the forest. The best thing about this book is how it seamlessly weaves in the mundane life of the city with the strange magic afoot. It feels real, like a true city even when giants walk the streets.
And it feels like a right proper USSR spy drama in the rest of it, which is brilliant - inter-department intrigue, hiding files, interrogation, dimly lit rooms, realizing that something is very, very wrong. I cannot overstate how well the author conveys the city, the characters, or what they believe in and fight for. Or rather, what they don't fight for, because - and this is lovely - only one character opens the novel knowing his clear-cut purpose. The rest have to figure it out along the way.
A note on structure: the author writes in short chapters, a few pages before he jumps again. It works brilliantly to convey a series of snapshots of the city, the people, the plot. It never feels rushed or cut, instead more like it's covering a lot of ground without boring you with what would be filler.
The ending is clear: more is coming. The plot has not been resolved. There is an angel in the forest who wishes to see mankind in starships, and depending on who you sympathize with, you'll want to see it succeed.
Highly recommended. I'm starting the next book now.
The plot hook is that in fantasy not-USSR, an unpopular inspector from a rural area is called into the capital of the not-USSR to find a revolutionary leader and report on him. Immediately there are strange things about the setting: the capital is not not-Moscow, but actually not-Saint Petersburg, judging from its location at the mouth of the sea on swampy marshland.
Other things abound: the presence of dead angels, their flesh implanted into children and molded into golems. Stranger things. Sentient rain. The walking spirit of the forest. The best thing about this book is how it seamlessly weaves in the mundane life of the city with the strange magic afoot. It feels real, like a true city even when giants walk the streets.
And it feels like a right proper USSR spy drama in the rest of it, which is brilliant - inter-department intrigue, hiding files, interrogation, dimly lit rooms, realizing that something is very, very wrong. I cannot overstate how well the author conveys the city, the characters, or what they believe in and fight for. Or rather, what they don't fight for, because - and this is lovely - only one character opens the novel knowing his clear-cut purpose. The rest have to figure it out along the way.
A note on structure: the author writes in short chapters, a few pages before he jumps again. It works brilliantly to convey a series of snapshots of the city, the people, the plot. It never feels rushed or cut, instead more like it's covering a lot of ground without boring you with what would be filler.
The ending is clear: more is coming. The plot has not been resolved. There is an angel in the forest who wishes to see mankind in starships, and depending on who you sympathize with, you'll want to see it succeed.
Highly recommended. I'm starting the next book now.
April 28, 2013
There’s a vast, impenetrable, unknowable forest right there, brushing up against a familiar city of men. It’s right there, and it shouldn’t be.
This isn’t the first of the fantastical elements we’re introduced to in Wolfhound Century, but this is the image that stayed with me, that really sucked me into the Vlast, Peter Higgins’ alternate Soviet Russia. Even with angels (or “angels”, rather) and giants popping up in its first pages, the Vlast's towns and cities feel very familiar, with their muggy cafés and slush-filled streets. But when Higgins introduces the idea of the Vlast as one almost-isolated wound of civilisation carved into the untamed nature of its world, he also rings a bell of cognitive dissonance that resonates through the rest of the book. Whenever I come across an alternate-history/secondary world fantasy mash-up like this, it’s always tempting to suspect authors of changing out the names and fudging the geography and history because they couldn’t be bothered with the research. In a couple of disorienting, rug-pulling paragraphs, Higgins justifies the Vlast (and the rest of its world) being exactly what it is. A real fake place, and not just Russia with the serial numbers filed off.
The first two thirds of Wolfhound Century’s story is a fairly standard noirish thriller (one good cop up against a corrupt system), but Higgins uses the conventional structures to his advantage. Instead of trying to subvert his audience’s expectations with forced twists and turns, he plays his cards face up. When Very Bad Things start happening to our one good cop (trust me, this is not a spoiler), their inevitability (and matter-of-fact foreshadowing) highlight the consequences of the protagonist’s actions, instead of serving as artificial heightening of stakes and suspense.
The aforementioned unfamiliar familiarity of the world building, and Higgins’ spare and beautiful prose also help augment and transform the standard issue story beats. There’s an otherness to both dialogues and narration that makes this seem more like an impeccable translation, than an English-language original. And I definitely mean that as a compliment.
Even though its prose is minimalistic, the book’s chief strength (one which blindsided me again and again) might be its turns into poetry. Higgins will periodically shift his tight third person narration from human players to other intelligences, whether superhuman or supernatural. More often than not, the resulting sequences are mind-blowing, awesome in the true sense of the word. Now and again, he’ll also knock out a paragraph or two in the middle of the main narrative which has me near catching my breath. Like this one, where the seeds of a decidedly low-key love story are sown:
I was a bit disappointed not to see the story resolved by the end of the book, but if you’re going to have a multi-part saga, I’d rather its individual instalments be brisk, 300 page affairs like Wolfhound Century, rather than thousand page monstrosities. I’m really, really excited to see where Higgins takes this next.
This isn’t the first of the fantastical elements we’re introduced to in Wolfhound Century, but this is the image that stayed with me, that really sucked me into the Vlast, Peter Higgins’ alternate Soviet Russia. Even with angels (or “angels”, rather) and giants popping up in its first pages, the Vlast's towns and cities feel very familiar, with their muggy cafés and slush-filled streets. But when Higgins introduces the idea of the Vlast as one almost-isolated wound of civilisation carved into the untamed nature of its world, he also rings a bell of cognitive dissonance that resonates through the rest of the book. Whenever I come across an alternate-history/secondary world fantasy mash-up like this, it’s always tempting to suspect authors of changing out the names and fudging the geography and history because they couldn’t be bothered with the research. In a couple of disorienting, rug-pulling paragraphs, Higgins justifies the Vlast (and the rest of its world) being exactly what it is. A real fake place, and not just Russia with the serial numbers filed off.
The first two thirds of Wolfhound Century’s story is a fairly standard noirish thriller (one good cop up against a corrupt system), but Higgins uses the conventional structures to his advantage. Instead of trying to subvert his audience’s expectations with forced twists and turns, he plays his cards face up. When Very Bad Things start happening to our one good cop (trust me, this is not a spoiler), their inevitability (and matter-of-fact foreshadowing) highlight the consequences of the protagonist’s actions, instead of serving as artificial heightening of stakes and suspense.
The aforementioned unfamiliar familiarity of the world building, and Higgins’ spare and beautiful prose also help augment and transform the standard issue story beats. There’s an otherness to both dialogues and narration that makes this seem more like an impeccable translation, than an English-language original. And I definitely mean that as a compliment.
Even though its prose is minimalistic, the book’s chief strength (one which blindsided me again and again) might be its turns into poetry. Higgins will periodically shift his tight third person narration from human players to other intelligences, whether superhuman or supernatural. More often than not, the resulting sequences are mind-blowing, awesome in the true sense of the word. Now and again, he’ll also knock out a paragraph or two in the middle of the main narrative which has me near catching my breath. Like this one, where the seeds of a decidedly low-key love story are sown:
“Lom watched her walk out of the room, straight and taut and brave. He felt something break open quietly inside him. A new rawness. An empty fullness. An uncertainty that felt like sadness or hunger, but wasn’t.”
I was a bit disappointed not to see the story resolved by the end of the book, but if you’re going to have a multi-part saga, I’d rather its individual instalments be brisk, 300 page affairs like Wolfhound Century, rather than thousand page monstrosities. I’m really, really excited to see where Higgins takes this next.
February 27, 2014
Now that I have had a good taste of the speculative fiction that is to be released in 2014, I can now declare that 2014 is the year of the spectacularly original debut novel, Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins being no exception. This novel is extremely hard to delegate to one genre, as it effortlessly dances the line between alternate history, fantasy, and noir crime fiction. It is set in an alternate history to 1940’s Stalinist Russia, and brings more than just the physical setting to play in this novel. Higgins has filled his characters with the mindset of those times, as products of an unstable society, constantly living with fear of each other. There are not any other novels that I can think to compare this novel to, and its striking originality is one of its best qualities.
The story follows Investigator Vissarion Lom, who has been summoned to the capitol city of Mirgorod to catch a terrorist. He has been chosen for this position because he is a complete outsider, and the head of the secret police feels that he has no one else he can trust in his search for the villain Josef Kantor. Kantor is a charismatic man who convinces many to join his cause, and as Lom searches for him, he comes to find that it feels like the whole city is working against him, including the bureaucracy and the institution that he serves. But Lom preservers in his search, going against both the natural and the supernatural, as Mirgorod is a city built on the corpse of a fallen angel (a piece of which Lom has embedded in his body, giving him an air of the supernatural himself), and it is filled with giants, gollems, magical forests, and other elements out of Slavic fairy tales.
This novel is not only original in its genre, but also in the way it is written. Its chapters are short, and the pacing of the plot is very fast, almost giving the book the feel of a crime drama. The writing, on the other hand, is beautiful and a bit dense, and the subject matter is very sophisticated. Even though it is paced light a pulp novel, its contents demand a sharp and discerning reader to catch all its nuances and follow the plots implications. For the average reader, I would recommend doing a quick Google search on Stalinist Russia, as I feel the echoes of this era play a large part in the capacity to fully appreciate this novel. The characters were dynamic, but it was a little hard to fully sympathize with them. A little more background foundation for Lom in particular (especially in the early part of the book) would have helped me to become a bit more engrossed in the story. Despite this, I really enjoyed this book, and will definitely be reading future works by Higgins.
I’m going to rate this book a 7.5/10.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in return for an honest review.
The story follows Investigator Vissarion Lom, who has been summoned to the capitol city of Mirgorod to catch a terrorist. He has been chosen for this position because he is a complete outsider, and the head of the secret police feels that he has no one else he can trust in his search for the villain Josef Kantor. Kantor is a charismatic man who convinces many to join his cause, and as Lom searches for him, he comes to find that it feels like the whole city is working against him, including the bureaucracy and the institution that he serves. But Lom preservers in his search, going against both the natural and the supernatural, as Mirgorod is a city built on the corpse of a fallen angel (a piece of which Lom has embedded in his body, giving him an air of the supernatural himself), and it is filled with giants, gollems, magical forests, and other elements out of Slavic fairy tales.
This novel is not only original in its genre, but also in the way it is written. Its chapters are short, and the pacing of the plot is very fast, almost giving the book the feel of a crime drama. The writing, on the other hand, is beautiful and a bit dense, and the subject matter is very sophisticated. Even though it is paced light a pulp novel, its contents demand a sharp and discerning reader to catch all its nuances and follow the plots implications. For the average reader, I would recommend doing a quick Google search on Stalinist Russia, as I feel the echoes of this era play a large part in the capacity to fully appreciate this novel. The characters were dynamic, but it was a little hard to fully sympathize with them. A little more background foundation for Lom in particular (especially in the early part of the book) would have helped me to become a bit more engrossed in the story. Despite this, I really enjoyed this book, and will definitely be reading future works by Higgins.
I’m going to rate this book a 7.5/10.
I received a copy of this book from Netgalley and the publisher in return for an honest review.
June 28, 2013
First thing you need to know about Wolfhound Century is: you do not talk about ...
No no, Wolfhound Century is a brilliant read. The prose especially is a delight--verastile and often poetic, full of imagery but also rich with full sensory experience--(you can tell Higgins is a lover of the language), but there were a few missteps along the way, where the beauty of the prose got in the way of the events being described; thank god such occurences were few and far between, because Wolfhound Century, in a word, was AWESOME. (I know. I use the word too much, but hey.)
Anyway, the story is this: In an alternate-history, revolution-era Russia, Inspector Vissarion Yppolitovich Lom, a man with a piece of angel-flesh implanted in his forehead, is taken from his hometown and thrown into the murky world and deadly politics of the capital city, Mirgorod; there he is secretly tasked with apprehending the godfather of political terrorists, Josef Kantor; "secret" because Kantor is planning something ... less than desirable for the city--and his protection seems to stem from very high up.
Well as you can see, Wolfhound Century is a thriller, but this is the least of its parts: it is a fantasy, with giants and forest creatures, Gods, angels, and elemental beings; it is a fascinating commentary on russian politics of the time, especially as regards artists, the public, political dissention, and governmental intrusion (i.e. spying, something that has become intimately relevant of late); and it is also a story about "power"--the want, aquiring, use and abuse of power, and relationships of dominance.
Okay, that's enough of that. As for the novel itself, it starts a little slowly, and so it took a little while for me to really get into it, not to mention the steep learning curve, but when I did: wow. As the thriller ratchets up the tension, the mystery unfolds, and as it unfolds, revelation by revelation, your excitement builds, and the book gets better and better until you're forced to sacrifice sleep in order to find out what happens next.
And then you hit the end. Huh? What?
No, it wasn't as bad as that--partly because I had a heads up, though, and partly becasue, looking at the percentage on my kindle (best way to read this for easy access to a DICTIONARY), it was clear the story arc would not climax with this book. I mean, it did work, wrapping up some threads while leaving more to look forward to come 2014, but it left me with the strange and vaguely annoyed feeling of being satisfied yet not, you know? Better than a cliff hanger, but ...
... Just playing. Here's the first five chapters:
http://io9.com/5986051/read-the-first...
Highly recommended.
Read it.
No no, Wolfhound Century is a brilliant read. The prose especially is a delight--verastile and often poetic, full of imagery but also rich with full sensory experience--(you can tell Higgins is a lover of the language), but there were a few missteps along the way, where the beauty of the prose got in the way of the events being described; thank god such occurences were few and far between, because Wolfhound Century, in a word, was AWESOME. (I know. I use the word too much, but hey.)
Anyway, the story is this: In an alternate-history, revolution-era Russia, Inspector Vissarion Yppolitovich Lom, a man with a piece of angel-flesh implanted in his forehead, is taken from his hometown and thrown into the murky world and deadly politics of the capital city, Mirgorod; there he is secretly tasked with apprehending the godfather of political terrorists, Josef Kantor; "secret" because Kantor is planning something ... less than desirable for the city--and his protection seems to stem from very high up.
Well as you can see, Wolfhound Century is a thriller, but this is the least of its parts: it is a fantasy, with giants and forest creatures, Gods, angels, and elemental beings; it is a fascinating commentary on russian politics of the time, especially as regards artists, the public, political dissention, and governmental intrusion (i.e. spying, something that has become intimately relevant of late); and it is also a story about "power"--the want, aquiring, use and abuse of power, and relationships of dominance.
Okay, that's enough of that. As for the novel itself, it starts a little slowly, and so it took a little while for me to really get into it, not to mention the steep learning curve, but when I did: wow. As the thriller ratchets up the tension, the mystery unfolds, and as it unfolds, revelation by revelation, your excitement builds, and the book gets better and better until you're forced to sacrifice sleep in order to find out what happens next.
And then you hit the end. Huh? What?
No, it wasn't as bad as that--partly because I had a heads up, though, and partly becasue, looking at the percentage on my kindle (best way to read this for easy access to a DICTIONARY), it was clear the story arc would not climax with this book. I mean, it did work, wrapping up some threads while leaving more to look forward to come 2014, but it left me with the strange and vaguely annoyed feeling of being satisfied yet not, you know? Better than a cliff hanger, but ...
... Just playing. Here's the first five chapters:
http://io9.com/5986051/read-the-first...
Highly recommended.
Read it.
Read
January 4, 2026Why I read it: The blurb. An investigator from the boonies is summoned to the capital to track down a terrorist against a pseudo-Soviet backdrop (the USSR with the serials filed off), and also "stone angels" fall from space after waging a war that apparently destroyed the moon, and their flesh is used to do all sorts of things. Seems like it was written for me.
Thoughts: It has a few shortfalls, but I liked it. I specifically liked it for the alternate version of the USSR that it built, and the way it was built (on the bones [sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively] of the nomadic civilisation that came before it). In some ways, this felt to me like the spiritual ancestor of The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands; there's a similar strong undertow of folklore and folk magic, and the magic and ancient ways are a key element of the world and actively seeking to effect radical change, except perhaps in Wolfhound Century they surface more throughout the story itself than they did in The Cautious Traveller's Guide. But if you told me the two novels are actually set in the same universe, with The Cautious... as a sequel to Wolfhound Century, I'd buy it.
I also really liked the writing style, particularly in descriptions of the city and the natural world, fragments which I found either relatable or evocative:
As I mentioned at the start, the faux USSR backdrop is personally appealing to me, though it was cumbersome to navigate at first -- lots of new words and names to figure out the meaning of from context, and I perhaps spent too much time trying to marry up this fantasy USSR with the real world, though I blame the book itself for it. The reinterpretation of Russia as the Vlast, spreading "from the forest in the west to the ocean in the east", with a French-sounding free state somewhere to the south-west, and with the protagonists encountering a giant with a Finnish-sounding name in the marshes to the north, how am I supposed to not superimpose this fictional fantasy world directly onto our world? Anyway, I liked that. I liked the interplay of fact and fiction, of old ways (the forest) and new ways (progress and industry as perhaps driven by the angel who wants to escape his imprisonment and devour[?] the planet), of modernity (big city, tram lines, factories) being routinely invaded and decimated by far older powers (the rain that washes away the city, the river that floods the city and brings in rusalki, the marsh everything washes out to, with its system of locks and sluice gates maintained by a giant).
I would say I liked the reinterpretation of real life events and historical figures (the Novozhd is obviously Stalin, right down to his bushy moustache; and another review points out that Lavrentina Chazia is a riff on Lavrentiy Beria; and Josef Kantor himself is a would-be young revolutionary in the mold of young Stalin), but when I think about it, is it really a reinterpretation or is it, like I said earlier, just filing off the serial numbers? Is just filing off the serial numbers enough to make a story good? It can be, if your plot and characters are strong enough, I suppose.
The plot here is, honestly, a little weak. Certainly, a lot of things do happen, but the pacing is certainly off. The novel never really hit its stride with me, never reached a point of "I really can't put this down". Frequently, it felt like it stalled; even though Lom did a stellar job as an investigator, it weirdly felt like he was treading water the whole time, though maybe that's because after his initial strong start, he kept being outmaneuvered by Chazia, and honestly it's a little sad and not interesting when your antagonists keep outshining your protagonist. Lom's survival itself, after his capture and torture, felt a little like deus ex machina (or deus ex palus, as it were [don't come at me for the noun declension, I just used Google Translate]).
The characters also only felt half-realised at best, and I really wanted to know so much more about either the forest or the angels. I at least wanted to know more about the Lezarye, who a review has interpreted as the intelligentsia/noble class criticised and thrown down by the Bolsheviks, but which I interpreted as being the nomadic people who were on the land first, before the Vlast, and who are still fighting for survival and recognition; one Lezarye character has amassed a library collection of surviving Lezarye books and manuscripts, and seems very knowledgeable in their lore and folklore, but of course that's never explored except for the one single time one character has need of it. I guess my greatest fear is that none of the world-building aspects I'm interested in are going to be explored in the next two volumes, and instead I'll still be stuck with Lom yet again waffling between being a policeman and not, and continuing to be a passive agent in the story of his own life (as it is clear he has been all the while until now, despite in-world reports to the contrary).
Would I read more from this author: Despite my misgivings, I'm very curious about how this whole thing is going to pan out, so yes.
Would I recommend it: Not a blanket recommendation, more a "if you like this sort of thing, this is a good example of it" sort of recommendation.
Keep or cull: Keep.
Thoughts: It has a few shortfalls, but I liked it. I specifically liked it for the alternate version of the USSR that it built, and the way it was built (on the bones [sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively] of the nomadic civilisation that came before it). In some ways, this felt to me like the spiritual ancestor of The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands; there's a similar strong undertow of folklore and folk magic, and the magic and ancient ways are a key element of the world and actively seeking to effect radical change, except perhaps in Wolfhound Century they surface more throughout the story itself than they did in The Cautious Traveller's Guide. But if you told me the two novels are actually set in the same universe, with The Cautious... as a sequel to Wolfhound Century, I'd buy it.
I also really liked the writing style, particularly in descriptions of the city and the natural world, fragments which I found either relatable or evocative:
Normally, Lom tried not to think about the forest too much - it was addictive, it consumed the hours - but now, with nothing else to do, he imagined what it would be like to walk there, smelling the damp earth, digging his fingers into layers of mouldering leaves and rotting, mushroomy fallen wood. Swimming in the white lakes. Great wolves and giant elk moving through splashes of sunlight.
Rain skittered down alleyways, riding curls of wind. Rain slid across roof-slates and tumbled down sluices and drainpipes and slipped through grilles into storm drains. Rain assembled itself in ropes in gutters and drains, and collected itself in watchful, waiting puddles and cisterns. Rain saturated old wood and porous stone and bare earth. Rain-mirrors on the ground looked up into the face of the falling rain. The wind-twisted air was crowded with flocks of rain: rain-sparrows and rain-pigeons, crows of rain. Rain-rats ran across the pavement and rain-dogs lurked in the shadows. Every column and droplet, every pool and puddle and sluice and splash, every slick, every windblown spillage of water and air, wsas alive. The rain was watching him.
Lom didn't wear his uniform. On the crowded train he and Vishnik were the only passengers without one. The Dreksler-Kino was draped with fresh new flags and banners, red and gold. Its immense marble dome was awash with floodlight. Vertical searchlights turned the clouds overhead into a vast liquescent ceiling that swelled and shifted, shedding fine drifts of rain.
As I mentioned at the start, the faux USSR backdrop is personally appealing to me, though it was cumbersome to navigate at first -- lots of new words and names to figure out the meaning of from context, and I perhaps spent too much time trying to marry up this fantasy USSR with the real world, though I blame the book itself for it. The reinterpretation of Russia as the Vlast, spreading "from the forest in the west to the ocean in the east", with a French-sounding free state somewhere to the south-west, and with the protagonists encountering a giant with a Finnish-sounding name in the marshes to the north, how am I supposed to not superimpose this fictional fantasy world directly onto our world? Anyway, I liked that. I liked the interplay of fact and fiction, of old ways (the forest) and new ways (progress and industry as perhaps driven by the angel who wants to escape his imprisonment and devour[?] the planet), of modernity (big city, tram lines, factories) being routinely invaded and decimated by far older powers (the rain that washes away the city, the river that floods the city and brings in rusalki, the marsh everything washes out to, with its system of locks and sluice gates maintained by a giant).
I would say I liked the reinterpretation of real life events and historical figures (the Novozhd is obviously Stalin, right down to his bushy moustache; and another review points out that Lavrentina Chazia is a riff on Lavrentiy Beria; and Josef Kantor himself is a would-be young revolutionary in the mold of young Stalin), but when I think about it, is it really a reinterpretation or is it, like I said earlier, just filing off the serial numbers? Is just filing off the serial numbers enough to make a story good? It can be, if your plot and characters are strong enough, I suppose.
The plot here is, honestly, a little weak. Certainly, a lot of things do happen, but the pacing is certainly off. The novel never really hit its stride with me, never reached a point of "I really can't put this down". Frequently, it felt like it stalled; even though Lom did a stellar job as an investigator, it weirdly felt like he was treading water the whole time, though maybe that's because after his initial strong start, he kept being outmaneuvered by Chazia, and honestly it's a little sad and not interesting when your antagonists keep outshining your protagonist. Lom's survival itself, after his capture and torture, felt a little like deus ex machina (or deus ex palus, as it were [don't come at me for the noun declension, I just used Google Translate]).
The characters also only felt half-realised at best, and I really wanted to know so much more about either the forest or the angels. I at least wanted to know more about the Lezarye, who a review has interpreted as the intelligentsia/noble class criticised and thrown down by the Bolsheviks, but which I interpreted as being the nomadic people who were on the land first, before the Vlast, and who are still fighting for survival and recognition; one Lezarye character has amassed a library collection of surviving Lezarye books and manuscripts, and seems very knowledgeable in their lore and folklore, but of course that's never explored except for the one single time one character has need of it. I guess my greatest fear is that none of the world-building aspects I'm interested in are going to be explored in the next two volumes, and instead I'll still be stuck with Lom yet again waffling between being a policeman and not, and continuing to be a passive agent in the story of his own life (as it is clear he has been all the while until now, despite in-world reports to the contrary).
Would I read more from this author: Despite my misgivings, I'm very curious about how this whole thing is going to pan out, so yes.
Would I recommend it: Not a blanket recommendation, more a "if you like this sort of thing, this is a good example of it" sort of recommendation.
Keep or cull: Keep.
March 22, 2013
I’ve read several novels over the last few years that were compared to China Miéville by reviewers, publishers, or both. In most cases, I thought the comparison was a stretch, to say the least. In some cases, it was simply ludicrous. Setting your fantasy novel in a grimy city where it rains a lot is not enough. Not every weird/slipstream dystopia qualifies. There is more to it than that.
When Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins arrived on my doorstep, featuring a prominent quote by Richard K. Morgan that compares it to “vintage Miéville or VanderMeer”, I was understandably sceptical. Here we go again. I expected the standard mediocre descriptions of grey, rain-swept buildings. Tired, noir stylings. Grim and grimy characters without much spark.
Read the entire review on my site Far Beyond Reality!
When Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins arrived on my doorstep, featuring a prominent quote by Richard K. Morgan that compares it to “vintage Miéville or VanderMeer”, I was understandably sceptical. Here we go again. I expected the standard mediocre descriptions of grey, rain-swept buildings. Tired, noir stylings. Grim and grimy characters without much spark.
Read the entire review on my site Far Beyond Reality!
March 17, 2013
Gorgeous world-building, all sorts of good stuff with the sci-fi soviet noir setting, but — and this is a huge but — there's simply no ending to the book. None. The book ends like a chapter ends. No closure whatsoever. Obviously sequel is in works, and hopefully arrives soon, because this book doesn't stand alone. I recommend waiting until a sequel is out before reading this one... I was very disappointed in the ending, but the storyso far is promising.
February 17, 2014
I have not read Gorky Park, yet. But I have seen the movie and this book reminds me of that with the added bonus of fantasy and without the unbelievable romantic sub-plot.
October 11, 2023
Well written and a fast-paced blend of Soviet Russia and fantasy elements that fit seamlessly together. Good debut novel from the author. Ends at a point that means I have to finish the trilogy!
December 9, 2024
Weird, dense and a challenging read. Whole heartedly its own beast. Never read anything like it
April 10, 2018
Well, this is a pretty wild book. It takes place in a sort of alternative Russia/Soviet Union. There's all the repressions, terror, anarchist activity, etc. you might expect from that. But there are also giant fallen angels (one's still alive), rusalkas, giants, golem-like creatures, corrupt officials, and a Forest that wants to reclaim the world.
It's all pretty interesting, and the first volume ends with a lot of action. I've already started listening to the second one.
It's all pretty interesting, and the first volume ends with a lot of action. I've already started listening to the second one.
November 3, 2019
So I really really liked this book. I’m writing about it not as a review but as way to articulate what I enjoyed so much. I’ve read a lot of books over the last year that were much acclaimed as mind-bending or fantastic or important or whatever, none of which have really bent my mind. I picked up this book without knowing anything about it except that it was some sort of fantasy spy novel. (The British publisher, Gollancz, tweeted out a picture of the first page in a “What’s this book?” game, and I was struck by the concepts.) This one didn’t exactly bend my mind – maybe having read too much literary criticism and modernist/ postmodernist/experimental novels keeps my mind from being bent much more than it has been. But I couldn’t predict where this novel was going, and I loved that.
It started out as a secondary world fantasy about a policeman in a Russian-inspired culture. It stayed that, but much more was added: fallen angels, other possible worlds, life under an oppressive Soviet-style regime, greed, magic. I don’t want to get into spoilers here, because a lot of the fun of the book for me was the unexpected – I would think I knew what was going on, and either the plot would twist a little or some element I never would have imagined was added. He had a great imagination for both spooky magic and human art.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the novel was the way Higgins made use of water – rain, river, floods, and marsh. Wetlands are a wonderful transitional place, great for observing a lot of biological diversity, but so often when they are used in fantasy – when used at all, which is infrequently – they are an obstacle to get around or a horror to be avoided. Swamp things and dead corpses, the stench of rot, the lonely pathless waste where one gets lost. Higgins’s marshes were beautiful and eerie. It reminded me more than anything else of Graham Swift’s Waterland, about the fen country of England. He also had a description of falling into a cold river that was amazingly imagined and described, and his flooded river is a force of itself. The flood did not become an action scene of our hero escaping from a bunch of enemies or predators; it was a powerful force of movement, inevitable, inescapable, nature greater than city.
Higgins also does some great work with language. Frequently I am disappointed to read a book that has been highly praised but is clunky or pedestrian in its language. Higgins wrote sentences such as
Lom breathed deeply, concentrating on the air around them, ancient and cold and thickened and still.
He can feel the unseen pull of the moons: a gentle lunar gravity tugging at his hair and palpating with infinite slowness the ventricular walls of his heart.
When he grew tired he lay down to sleep, and in the dawn when he woke his clothes crackled with the snapping of ice.
The words carry their own weight. They have an intensity and a lyrical quality that I haven’t seen in a lot of other fantasy novels. At the same time, they are plain, solid, not overwrought and baroque purple prose. It would be really easy to write that last example as “when he woke his clothes had frozen solid” – accurate, but not evocative. Higgins used strong verbs to convey the imagery, which is one of my favorite things when reading. (As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a language junky.) As the story becomes stranger, Higgins’s style moves from a straightforward detective type prose to more poetic and nuanced imagery.
The novel has its flaws – nothing is perfect. But since I’m not reviewing it, I don’t have to go into them. It did the best thing any book can do for me – kicked me into my own creative high gear. It’s a book I wish I’d written, and it inspired me to go out and write something that stretches my imagination and my style.
It started out as a secondary world fantasy about a policeman in a Russian-inspired culture. It stayed that, but much more was added: fallen angels, other possible worlds, life under an oppressive Soviet-style regime, greed, magic. I don’t want to get into spoilers here, because a lot of the fun of the book for me was the unexpected – I would think I knew what was going on, and either the plot would twist a little or some element I never would have imagined was added. He had a great imagination for both spooky magic and human art.
One of the things I really enjoyed about the novel was the way Higgins made use of water – rain, river, floods, and marsh. Wetlands are a wonderful transitional place, great for observing a lot of biological diversity, but so often when they are used in fantasy – when used at all, which is infrequently – they are an obstacle to get around or a horror to be avoided. Swamp things and dead corpses, the stench of rot, the lonely pathless waste where one gets lost. Higgins’s marshes were beautiful and eerie. It reminded me more than anything else of Graham Swift’s Waterland, about the fen country of England. He also had a description of falling into a cold river that was amazingly imagined and described, and his flooded river is a force of itself. The flood did not become an action scene of our hero escaping from a bunch of enemies or predators; it was a powerful force of movement, inevitable, inescapable, nature greater than city.
Higgins also does some great work with language. Frequently I am disappointed to read a book that has been highly praised but is clunky or pedestrian in its language. Higgins wrote sentences such as
Lom breathed deeply, concentrating on the air around them, ancient and cold and thickened and still.
He can feel the unseen pull of the moons: a gentle lunar gravity tugging at his hair and palpating with infinite slowness the ventricular walls of his heart.
When he grew tired he lay down to sleep, and in the dawn when he woke his clothes crackled with the snapping of ice.
The words carry their own weight. They have an intensity and a lyrical quality that I haven’t seen in a lot of other fantasy novels. At the same time, they are plain, solid, not overwrought and baroque purple prose. It would be really easy to write that last example as “when he woke his clothes had frozen solid” – accurate, but not evocative. Higgins used strong verbs to convey the imagery, which is one of my favorite things when reading. (As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a language junky.) As the story becomes stranger, Higgins’s style moves from a straightforward detective type prose to more poetic and nuanced imagery.
The novel has its flaws – nothing is perfect. But since I’m not reviewing it, I don’t have to go into them. It did the best thing any book can do for me – kicked me into my own creative high gear. It’s a book I wish I’d written, and it inspired me to go out and write something that stretches my imagination and my style.
Read
August 11, 2015The title is from a poem by Osip Mandelstam, poet and victim of Stalin's Terror: "The wolfhound century is on my back - /But I am not a wolf". And all the while I've been reading this, that has gone around in my head, seeming haunting one moment and bathetic the next. Which sums up the book rather well. More than once I nearly abandoned it, only given pause the first time by the quality of the jacket quote suppliers (Richard Morgan and Hannu Rajaniemi). The former is quite right when he references "vintage Mieville"; when Higgins is immersed in the weird, he can be that powerful, heady with unsettling poetry (KJ Bishop at her least whimsical would be another fair comparison). When Wolfhound Century deals with the forest and its emissaries, the angels and their intrusions, or the moments of strangeness that erupt into everyday life in the city, it's that good.
But set against that, the bones of the plot are so painfully generic. The woman whose unknown past makes her a target for a nefarious conspiracy; the one good cop in a bad system, who doesn't know when to stop even as the bodies pile up. I am so incredibly bored of these people, in all their myriad guises. Yes, I know there are other genre standards just as hoary whom I forgive, who seem to me representatives of their type without being painfully so - but we each have styles whose contrivances we can overlook, and ones we can't. Similarly, I can handle the ridiculousness of superhero comics but not the absurdity of opera, where for someone else the reverse holds true.
And between the deep worldbuilding and the shallow leads, we have perhaps the most significant component of all: the setting. As the epigraph and the cover suggest, the principal influence here is the USSR at its mid-20th century zenith/nadir. Now, I love a fantasia on a Soviet theme; many years back I read the first volume of a haunting comic called The Red Star, a heightened dream of how noble the Revolution's goals were and how Hellish the depths to which it would later come. I never saw any more, alas, and no proper collection now seems to exist, if it was even completed. I suppose I was looking for something similar here. Now, Higgins makes abundantly clear that his Vlast is not the USSR, nor even a straight allegory for it; they bear the same loose correspondence as Middle-Earth and the Middle Ages. But even within that, details of the tone seem wrong; the press is too free, the artists too insubordinate, and so forth. To some extent, it strengthens the idea to have the setting partake of the Tsar's Russia as much as Stalin's, for what was Stalin if not another especially shit Tsar? Likewise the details borrowed from the Third Reich; you could certainly write a work of great power about the ur-dictatorship behind those hideous twins, the Platonic* tyranny of which both were shadows. Alas, as with the lead characters, that was not the sensation with which I was left; through its small imprecisions, it ended up feeling more stereotype than archetype.
The McGuffin, though, was ingenious: the Pollandore, a (somewhat) physical expression of the idea that the world could be a different way. A physical manifestation of the notion that the future, and even the past, do not have to be like the present. Because yes, ultimately that is what all dictatorships are seeking to destroy. Oh, I do want to know how it all resolves in future volumes, what further strangeness Higgins' world holds. I just don't want to have to put up with his protagonists on the road there.
*Pun very much intended, because it could very easily be a descendant of the nightmare state that old bastard described in his beastly Republic.
But set against that, the bones of the plot are so painfully generic. The woman whose unknown past makes her a target for a nefarious conspiracy; the one good cop in a bad system, who doesn't know when to stop even as the bodies pile up. I am so incredibly bored of these people, in all their myriad guises. Yes, I know there are other genre standards just as hoary whom I forgive, who seem to me representatives of their type without being painfully so - but we each have styles whose contrivances we can overlook, and ones we can't. Similarly, I can handle the ridiculousness of superhero comics but not the absurdity of opera, where for someone else the reverse holds true.
And between the deep worldbuilding and the shallow leads, we have perhaps the most significant component of all: the setting. As the epigraph and the cover suggest, the principal influence here is the USSR at its mid-20th century zenith/nadir. Now, I love a fantasia on a Soviet theme; many years back I read the first volume of a haunting comic called The Red Star, a heightened dream of how noble the Revolution's goals were and how Hellish the depths to which it would later come. I never saw any more, alas, and no proper collection now seems to exist, if it was even completed. I suppose I was looking for something similar here. Now, Higgins makes abundantly clear that his Vlast is not the USSR, nor even a straight allegory for it; they bear the same loose correspondence as Middle-Earth and the Middle Ages. But even within that, details of the tone seem wrong; the press is too free, the artists too insubordinate, and so forth. To some extent, it strengthens the idea to have the setting partake of the Tsar's Russia as much as Stalin's, for what was Stalin if not another especially shit Tsar? Likewise the details borrowed from the Third Reich; you could certainly write a work of great power about the ur-dictatorship behind those hideous twins, the Platonic* tyranny of which both were shadows. Alas, as with the lead characters, that was not the sensation with which I was left; through its small imprecisions, it ended up feeling more stereotype than archetype.
The McGuffin, though, was ingenious: the Pollandore, a (somewhat) physical expression of the idea that the world could be a different way. A physical manifestation of the notion that the future, and even the past, do not have to be like the present. Because yes, ultimately that is what all dictatorships are seeking to destroy. Oh, I do want to know how it all resolves in future volumes, what further strangeness Higgins' world holds. I just don't want to have to put up with his protagonists on the road there.
*Pun very much intended, because it could very easily be a descendant of the nightmare state that old bastard described in his beastly Republic.
April 4, 2014
First Reads Review - Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins
So I'm a big fan of History Fantasy, which is rather what I would consider this book I won through the First Reads program. It's not really Russian, because it takes place in a world where Russia doesn't exist, but it is based on Russia, with a rather Russian feel to it. The main character, Vissarion, is basically the last good cop in a sea of corruption and is called into the capital in order to sniff out a nefarious plot and right that which is wrong. It's a good enough hook and the writing is solid, fluid, descriptive. The setting itself is interesting, with the bustle of a early-industrial state coexisting with more magical elements like giants and various forest spirits, as well as alien angels that occasionally fall from the sky dead and whose flesh holds certain powers.
So the set up and the initial character work with Vissarion and Josef is good, is compelling. There is a corrupt feeling to the place, where a uniform is seen as bad, something that Vissarion runs up against time and again within the story, where people won't trust him despite his intentions being mostly honorable. There is also a sense that these are characters who are a bit more complicated than just wanting good and evil, as just a bad guy and a good guy, though at times that is what they seem more like. The nuance isn't exactly always there, because Josef comes off as dangerously crazy, a psychopath, and Vissarion as a genuine person who believes order should be for the people. It's an all right conflict, but one that felt a little simple and lacking layering.
Slightly more problematic was that the story breaks rather abruptly towards the end, or at least three quarters of the way through. Up to then there was one story, one that had the feeling like it could be resolved by the end of the book. Now I knew this was only a book one, but at the same time I hoped that it would manage to tell a single, complete story. And the last quarter of the book dashed that by opening can of worms after can of worms. I can understand setting things up for future books, but it seemed a bit excessive the extent to which new plot points were created and then left unresolved. It left me quite unsatisfied with the ending, not so much exited for the next installment as annoyed that I got tricked into thinking these things would be wrapped up. I just wanted more of an effort made to keep things within the confines of the story of the rest of the book instead of introducing wildly new aspects that late, taking the characters away from the scene of any possible resolution, and putting them together in such a way that would imply a romantic relationship. It just was too much, too late.
Still, the book itself was more enjoyable than not. The setting is deftly crafted and the characters, while not exactly the most complex or explored, feel suited to the setting. If this had been a single book that had lasted another 100 pages but finished, I think I would have liked it much more. There wouldn't have been such a push to force a relationship by the end and I don't think some of the developments would have happened as they did, to extend the plot and purposefully not end it. In the end it was a fun read but not something I'll probably go further with, a 6.75/10.
So I'm a big fan of History Fantasy, which is rather what I would consider this book I won through the First Reads program. It's not really Russian, because it takes place in a world where Russia doesn't exist, but it is based on Russia, with a rather Russian feel to it. The main character, Vissarion, is basically the last good cop in a sea of corruption and is called into the capital in order to sniff out a nefarious plot and right that which is wrong. It's a good enough hook and the writing is solid, fluid, descriptive. The setting itself is interesting, with the bustle of a early-industrial state coexisting with more magical elements like giants and various forest spirits, as well as alien angels that occasionally fall from the sky dead and whose flesh holds certain powers.
So the set up and the initial character work with Vissarion and Josef is good, is compelling. There is a corrupt feeling to the place, where a uniform is seen as bad, something that Vissarion runs up against time and again within the story, where people won't trust him despite his intentions being mostly honorable. There is also a sense that these are characters who are a bit more complicated than just wanting good and evil, as just a bad guy and a good guy, though at times that is what they seem more like. The nuance isn't exactly always there, because Josef comes off as dangerously crazy, a psychopath, and Vissarion as a genuine person who believes order should be for the people. It's an all right conflict, but one that felt a little simple and lacking layering.
Slightly more problematic was that the story breaks rather abruptly towards the end, or at least three quarters of the way through. Up to then there was one story, one that had the feeling like it could be resolved by the end of the book. Now I knew this was only a book one, but at the same time I hoped that it would manage to tell a single, complete story. And the last quarter of the book dashed that by opening can of worms after can of worms. I can understand setting things up for future books, but it seemed a bit excessive the extent to which new plot points were created and then left unresolved. It left me quite unsatisfied with the ending, not so much exited for the next installment as annoyed that I got tricked into thinking these things would be wrapped up. I just wanted more of an effort made to keep things within the confines of the story of the rest of the book instead of introducing wildly new aspects that late, taking the characters away from the scene of any possible resolution, and putting them together in such a way that would imply a romantic relationship. It just was too much, too late.
Still, the book itself was more enjoyable than not. The setting is deftly crafted and the characters, while not exactly the most complex or explored, feel suited to the setting. If this had been a single book that had lasted another 100 pages but finished, I think I would have liked it much more. There wouldn't have been such a push to force a relationship by the end and I don't think some of the developments would have happened as they did, to extend the plot and purposefully not end it. In the end it was a fun read but not something I'll probably go further with, a 6.75/10.
February 24, 2014
If you're looking for a new flavour of fantasy fiction, Wolfhound Century offers a rather unique set-up. The book doesn't just take place in an other-Russia, but is written almost in the style of Russian writers, with the same ponderous oppression of glowering grey skies above a vast snowbound landscape. Here, Vissarion Lom goes from provincial plod to big city pawn, drawn by his superiors into a fight in the capital city he has little hope of understanding against adversaries that are giants to his gnat-like status.
This is a kind of early 20th century other-Russia in the grip of a malignant sprawling government that only artists and dissidents disagree with - a familiar setting, but populated with anthropomorphic forces of nature and "angels", great beings that could be gods or aliens who have fallen from the skies and brought their own problems into the mix. Lom is given the extremely difficult, but seemingly straightforward task of locating Josef Kantor, a violent dissident with more than a hint of Hitler about him that is terrorising the capital. But naturally, nothing is as it seems and his search for Kantor uncovers plots, conspiracies and forces he never knew existed, as well as some truths about himself he appears to never have suspected.
Higgins has crafted a beautiful world that he paints lavishly with every word, one that is both familiar to anyone who's ever read a book by a Russian great and unfamiliar, even to a seasoned fantasy reader. This world throws up its own fantastical beings that seem to belong here as they wouldn't in the traditional quasi-medieval settings of most of this genre's novels. For every lovingly detailed description of place, however, Higgins gives a frustratingly fleeting sense of character. Although we get some of Lom's backstory as the novel progresses, he remains an elusively two-dimensional character, with only his job and his desire for Maroussia, the main female character, to drive him. He shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness and curiosity, particularly for a man whose main occupation is analysing and interrogating the motives of others. It's up to his only friend in the city, Raku Vishnik, to pursue the deeper questions about what it might all mean and that isn't a situation that lasts long.
Kantor is a compelling and clearly complex villain, a charismatic and intelligent psychopath with layers of motivation and meaning that are hinted at, but not filled in enough by the end of the book. And Maroussia barely exists at all, showing up out of nowhere and given very little space to do anything other than be around for others to interact with and Lom to pursue. This is the first in a series so there's hope that Higgins plans to fill in some of the blanks in further novels, which will be needed if we're to stick with these characters for longer than a couple of books.
But with Wolfhound Century, there's enough in the remainder of the novel, the beautifully drawn world, the many mysteries of the supernatural forces at work and the taut political thrills all pulled into a straight-up cat-and-mouse chase that keeps the pages fast turning and all but guarantees a second outing.
This is a kind of early 20th century other-Russia in the grip of a malignant sprawling government that only artists and dissidents disagree with - a familiar setting, but populated with anthropomorphic forces of nature and "angels", great beings that could be gods or aliens who have fallen from the skies and brought their own problems into the mix. Lom is given the extremely difficult, but seemingly straightforward task of locating Josef Kantor, a violent dissident with more than a hint of Hitler about him that is terrorising the capital. But naturally, nothing is as it seems and his search for Kantor uncovers plots, conspiracies and forces he never knew existed, as well as some truths about himself he appears to never have suspected.
Higgins has crafted a beautiful world that he paints lavishly with every word, one that is both familiar to anyone who's ever read a book by a Russian great and unfamiliar, even to a seasoned fantasy reader. This world throws up its own fantastical beings that seem to belong here as they wouldn't in the traditional quasi-medieval settings of most of this genre's novels. For every lovingly detailed description of place, however, Higgins gives a frustratingly fleeting sense of character. Although we get some of Lom's backstory as the novel progresses, he remains an elusively two-dimensional character, with only his job and his desire for Maroussia, the main female character, to drive him. He shows a remarkable lack of self-awareness and curiosity, particularly for a man whose main occupation is analysing and interrogating the motives of others. It's up to his only friend in the city, Raku Vishnik, to pursue the deeper questions about what it might all mean and that isn't a situation that lasts long.
Kantor is a compelling and clearly complex villain, a charismatic and intelligent psychopath with layers of motivation and meaning that are hinted at, but not filled in enough by the end of the book. And Maroussia barely exists at all, showing up out of nowhere and given very little space to do anything other than be around for others to interact with and Lom to pursue. This is the first in a series so there's hope that Higgins plans to fill in some of the blanks in further novels, which will be needed if we're to stick with these characters for longer than a couple of books.
But with Wolfhound Century, there's enough in the remainder of the novel, the beautifully drawn world, the many mysteries of the supernatural forces at work and the taut political thrills all pulled into a straight-up cat-and-mouse chase that keeps the pages fast turning and all but guarantees a second outing.
February 15, 2022
Ever searched for a fantasy book set in a world heavily inspired by Stalinist Russia? Probably no, because who in their right mind would put their heroes into a bleak, gritty environment filled with merciless communists, when one might say fantasy is supposed to be about escapism above all.
Yet the fantasy element is very strong in this one, the atmosphere immersive, the contrasts great and the writing of top quality. Reading this is a unique experience, and if you think you’ve read it all and the fantasy genre(s) can no longer surprise and satisfy you, then I recommend giving this a shot.
FOR WHOM IS THIS BOOK GOOD FOR
Experienced readers of fantasy, but also good for casual readers. This book is a page turner and isn’t very complicated to read through, yet I dare to say is also unique enough to grasp the attention of even the most elitist readers. One negative is its length, or lack of thereof - I'd definitely want to see more from this world than was presented in the book/trilogy.
THE PLOT
On the surface this is a classic noir story, the tough detective going against a rotten regime. In a totalitarian state worn down by an endless war, Investigator Lom is summoned to the capital city to catch a dangerous terrorist, reporting directly to the head of the secret police. All the clues point to a conspiracy brewing in high places however, and soon Lom will find himself fighting all on his own.
Yet there is more to this power struggle than he could first imagine. An angel has fallen from the skies and became trapped in a vast, mysterious woodland known only as the Forest. It is the first angel to survive the fall, and it soon starts to corrupt the Forest and the state inhabitants with its otherworldly powers. The angel moves its own pawns, and a connection is unveiled between his doings and the activities of some of the high-ranking officials of the state.
War is closing in on the capital city, and the political classes are in turmoil as Lom continues his fight, aided by unexpected allies from the Forest itself.
THE EXECUTION OF THE PLOT
The plot was executed well, although the book was quite short and after concluding my journey through the pages, I was left wanting more of the forest creatures, more of the history of this weird world, more of everything. Yes, this is a trilogy, and no, the feeling didn’t go away even after book three.
All the books are fast-paced and heavily plot-centric with less page-time left towards the character and world building, yet I must say the world was developed exceptionally well despite that. Better than the story, even. The story itself was predictable at times but generally well done, although on its own, it's nothing phenomenal. Unless you’re a sucker for the crime thriller genre, which I’m not.
A persistent theme throughout the book is the struggle of the industrialized State against the mythical Forest and its fairy-tale, magical inhabitants. Progress against tradition, possibly, and a very nice layer to the otherwise straightforward story. The book was very atmospheric, and the style of writing seemed to shift a lot, from beautiful, lyrical prose when dealing with the mystical elements of the Forest and nature in general, to a rather raw, brutal style when dealing with the grimness of the state capital. I don’t believe I’ve ever read a book by an author able to switch his writing style so consistently.
One thing that I found weird was the relatively short time frame the story took place in. A coup, a romance, a couple of stand-offs and a tragic loss of a friend - it all happened in a matter of just a few days, which felt rather unrealistic. Especially the romance part. I hate instant, rushed romance subplots, but fortunately, here it was a really minor element of the story, so it didn’t bother me much.
THE WORLDBUILDING
The setting is inspired by Stalinist Russia, but there are intelligent non-human inhabitants roaming around the vast industrial cities, such as Giants as Palubas, the latter being a sort of a wooden and moss body carrying a spirit of the Forest, as far as I could remember. A lot of the terms were borrowed from Slavic dictionaries, which made me happy, being a Slav myself :) The totalitarian state was named as Vlast, which actually translates back to “State”, the aforementioned Palubas roughly translate as “Vessels”, which they are, in the end. A lot of the names were pseudo-Slavic, too, such as Mirgorod, Vishnik etc.
Apart from the vast State being the industrialized, totalitarian nation inhabited by human comrades, and the vast Forest inhabited by fairy-tale beings, there is also the Archipelago, an alliance of island nations that are fighting (and winning) a war against the State. We never get to meet anyone from the Archipelago, though, them being only a threat hanging somewhere in the background. I’d love to explore more of those nations too, but due to the length of the book, or rather the lack of length, there was no time to do so I guess.
There is some magic in the books, the supernatural powers coming mostly from the otherworldly angels. Corpses of these angels are harvested by State employees, having a plethora of experimental uses, such as heavy duty exoskeletal armors, or the mudjhiks, artificial beings created from angel flesh with a living dogs brain inserted into the skull, and then commanded by handlers (human soldiers paired with these things). I found the idea both terrifying and fascinating, because Soviet Russia actually did some military research towards implementing a similar concept of obedient dog soldiers back in the day, and some of that research was later useful in the area of blood transplant.
All in all, the setting and all the mentioned elements are written with extreme care for detail, and the author did a perfect job on this front, in my humble opinion.
THE CHARACTERS
I’d say the characters were one of the weaker pillars of the book, but not a detracting one. Some books just don’t put that much focus on character to maintain the fast pace, and if it works, it's okay.
There are multiple POV’s that navigate the story, yet most focus is put on the main character, Lom, the tough detective. To me, I never truly understood his motives, he seemed like the “man on a mission” type, the unemotional badass moving forward no matter the odds, never letting himself think too much about the orders and getting lost and depressed once there are no orders left to follow (that doesn’t come until book 3 though)
What I found really intriguing were the thought processes of some of the powerful people in high places, how they justified their actions that resulted in deaths and misery of hundreds, yet some still believed they were doing the greater good. The ultimate villain character being represented by the terrorist Joseph Kantor only comes to shine in book three though, once he becomes free of the external forces driving him forward. His vision of what mankinds future should look like is terrifying, but understandable, given his character traits and his background. I found his character from book three the most interesting one, even if he is a horrible, evil person. That is a plus; unlike many fantasy books, there are no cardboard villains here, but well crafted ones, with conflicting agendas.
The other main characters all have some background to them, and something driving them forward, but the plot isn’t driven by their actions at all, they are just there for the ride.
CONCLUSION
An intriguing series spanning a lot of genres that I believe will satisfy the most picky readers of fantasy. If you like what you’ve read so far, go on and give it a try!
The book was originally reviewed on my blog - The Crimson Castle
Yet the fantasy element is very strong in this one, the atmosphere immersive, the contrasts great and the writing of top quality. Reading this is a unique experience, and if you think you’ve read it all and the fantasy genre(s) can no longer surprise and satisfy you, then I recommend giving this a shot.
FOR WHOM IS THIS BOOK GOOD FOR
Experienced readers of fantasy, but also good for casual readers. This book is a page turner and isn’t very complicated to read through, yet I dare to say is also unique enough to grasp the attention of even the most elitist readers. One negative is its length, or lack of thereof - I'd definitely want to see more from this world than was presented in the book/trilogy.
THE PLOT
On the surface this is a classic noir story, the tough detective going against a rotten regime. In a totalitarian state worn down by an endless war, Investigator Lom is summoned to the capital city to catch a dangerous terrorist, reporting directly to the head of the secret police. All the clues point to a conspiracy brewing in high places however, and soon Lom will find himself fighting all on his own.
Yet there is more to this power struggle than he could first imagine. An angel has fallen from the skies and became trapped in a vast, mysterious woodland known only as the Forest. It is the first angel to survive the fall, and it soon starts to corrupt the Forest and the state inhabitants with its otherworldly powers. The angel moves its own pawns, and a connection is unveiled between his doings and the activities of some of the high-ranking officials of the state.
War is closing in on the capital city, and the political classes are in turmoil as Lom continues his fight, aided by unexpected allies from the Forest itself.
THE EXECUTION OF THE PLOT
The plot was executed well, although the book was quite short and after concluding my journey through the pages, I was left wanting more of the forest creatures, more of the history of this weird world, more of everything. Yes, this is a trilogy, and no, the feeling didn’t go away even after book three.
All the books are fast-paced and heavily plot-centric with less page-time left towards the character and world building, yet I must say the world was developed exceptionally well despite that. Better than the story, even. The story itself was predictable at times but generally well done, although on its own, it's nothing phenomenal. Unless you’re a sucker for the crime thriller genre, which I’m not.
A persistent theme throughout the book is the struggle of the industrialized State against the mythical Forest and its fairy-tale, magical inhabitants. Progress against tradition, possibly, and a very nice layer to the otherwise straightforward story. The book was very atmospheric, and the style of writing seemed to shift a lot, from beautiful, lyrical prose when dealing with the mystical elements of the Forest and nature in general, to a rather raw, brutal style when dealing with the grimness of the state capital. I don’t believe I’ve ever read a book by an author able to switch his writing style so consistently.
One thing that I found weird was the relatively short time frame the story took place in. A coup, a romance, a couple of stand-offs and a tragic loss of a friend - it all happened in a matter of just a few days, which felt rather unrealistic. Especially the romance part. I hate instant, rushed romance subplots, but fortunately, here it was a really minor element of the story, so it didn’t bother me much.
THE WORLDBUILDING
The setting is inspired by Stalinist Russia, but there are intelligent non-human inhabitants roaming around the vast industrial cities, such as Giants as Palubas, the latter being a sort of a wooden and moss body carrying a spirit of the Forest, as far as I could remember. A lot of the terms were borrowed from Slavic dictionaries, which made me happy, being a Slav myself :) The totalitarian state was named as Vlast, which actually translates back to “State”, the aforementioned Palubas roughly translate as “Vessels”, which they are, in the end. A lot of the names were pseudo-Slavic, too, such as Mirgorod, Vishnik etc.
Apart from the vast State being the industrialized, totalitarian nation inhabited by human comrades, and the vast Forest inhabited by fairy-tale beings, there is also the Archipelago, an alliance of island nations that are fighting (and winning) a war against the State. We never get to meet anyone from the Archipelago, though, them being only a threat hanging somewhere in the background. I’d love to explore more of those nations too, but due to the length of the book, or rather the lack of length, there was no time to do so I guess.
There is some magic in the books, the supernatural powers coming mostly from the otherworldly angels. Corpses of these angels are harvested by State employees, having a plethora of experimental uses, such as heavy duty exoskeletal armors, or the mudjhiks, artificial beings created from angel flesh with a living dogs brain inserted into the skull, and then commanded by handlers (human soldiers paired with these things). I found the idea both terrifying and fascinating, because Soviet Russia actually did some military research towards implementing a similar concept of obedient dog soldiers back in the day, and some of that research was later useful in the area of blood transplant.
All in all, the setting and all the mentioned elements are written with extreme care for detail, and the author did a perfect job on this front, in my humble opinion.
THE CHARACTERS
I’d say the characters were one of the weaker pillars of the book, but not a detracting one. Some books just don’t put that much focus on character to maintain the fast pace, and if it works, it's okay.
There are multiple POV’s that navigate the story, yet most focus is put on the main character, Lom, the tough detective. To me, I never truly understood his motives, he seemed like the “man on a mission” type, the unemotional badass moving forward no matter the odds, never letting himself think too much about the orders and getting lost and depressed once there are no orders left to follow (that doesn’t come until book 3 though)
What I found really intriguing were the thought processes of some of the powerful people in high places, how they justified their actions that resulted in deaths and misery of hundreds, yet some still believed they were doing the greater good. The ultimate villain character being represented by the terrorist Joseph Kantor only comes to shine in book three though, once he becomes free of the external forces driving him forward. His vision of what mankinds future should look like is terrifying, but understandable, given his character traits and his background. I found his character from book three the most interesting one, even if he is a horrible, evil person. That is a plus; unlike many fantasy books, there are no cardboard villains here, but well crafted ones, with conflicting agendas.
The other main characters all have some background to them, and something driving them forward, but the plot isn’t driven by their actions at all, they are just there for the ride.
CONCLUSION
An intriguing series spanning a lot of genres that I believe will satisfy the most picky readers of fantasy. If you like what you’ve read so far, go on and give it a try!
The book was originally reviewed on my blog - The Crimson Castle
January 22, 2018
Continuing my return to fantasy with a book whose front-cover blurb is by the same obscure (to me at least) author as the one for Fair Rebel. The type of setting is different from any subgenre I've encountered before - it takes a part of fairly recent history, namely Stalinist Russia, with a few overtones of the Russian Empire, and transposes it into a fantasy analogue full of witchcrafty sendings, water spirits, giants exploited as heavy laborers, and so forth, all mixed in with the early-twentieth-century-type technology. Then there are the angels, beings that have been falling dead from outer space as the result of some kind of war for hundreds of years. In fact, this empire, the Vlast of the One Truth, is somehow founded on these dead angels and uses their rock-like bodies to make giant golem-zombie things called mudjhiks, and for other sinister purposes. Now there is a fallen angel who is alive, and manipulating a terrorist group even nastier than the Vlast government, with a purpose that doesn't become completely clear in this book but is definitely evil. Two people, a low-level provincial detective and the daughter of the terrorist leader's ex-wife, get drawn into the conflict and become the main characters. Nature - the possibly endless forest to the east of the Vlast and the marshes between the capital and the sea - comes off surprisingly positively for a book with such an urban setting and macho-ish plot. On the other hand I found the fake (?) Russian names jarring, even if they can't be worse than Fremen quasi-Arabic. I will finish the series.
November 30, 2021
There's a wonderful bit of dialogue from the movie Amadeus when the Emperor tells Mozart what he thinks of his newest work:
EMPEROR: It's very good. Of course now and then - just now and then - it gets a touch elaborate.
MOZART: What do you mean, Sire?
EMPEROR: Well, I mean occasionally it seems to have, how shall one say? [he stops in difficulty; turning to Orsini-Rosenberg] How shall one say, Director?
ORSINI-ROSENBERG: Too many notes, Your Majesty?
EMPEROR: Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.
The criticism is absurd, of course; it's Mozart!! But unfortunately, now I have to play the role of Emperor and declare that Peter Higgins' Wolfhound Century has too many notes.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed reading this book. For a first-time author (I think this is his first book) he's incredibly confident and plunges us right into a Russian-inspired fantasy world full of evil mind-controlling angels and alternate realities and hallucinations that might not be hallucinations and giant trolls and spies and disillusioned police investigators and a forest full of Bad Things that stretches on forever and mobile spirits and bloody revolutions and city-destroying floods... and that's just a typical Tuesday! (haha)
In other words, too many notes, especially for a book that's only 303 pages. But Higgins is a very good and engaging writer who knows how to keep the action moving and trusts the audience to figure out the rules for themselves, and I will likely move on to book #2 because I liked his characters and want to know what happens to them. Even though his world is stuffed to the rafters in a small space, I still want to learn its secrets.
So I'm generously giving Wolfhound Century 3.5 stars rounded up.
Note: one trope I hate in narrative works of art is absurd coincidences. For example, our main character talks about the challenges of finding the right people for his investigation in a city of a million people. Then it turns out his only contact in the city happens to be 1 degree of separation from almost everybody relevant to the case. What are the chances! Well, that's what you're going to get in a 300 page novel, I suppose.
EMPEROR: It's very good. Of course now and then - just now and then - it gets a touch elaborate.
MOZART: What do you mean, Sire?
EMPEROR: Well, I mean occasionally it seems to have, how shall one say? [he stops in difficulty; turning to Orsini-Rosenberg] How shall one say, Director?
ORSINI-ROSENBERG: Too many notes, Your Majesty?
EMPEROR: Exactly. Very well put. Too many notes.
The criticism is absurd, of course; it's Mozart!! But unfortunately, now I have to play the role of Emperor and declare that Peter Higgins' Wolfhound Century has too many notes.
Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed reading this book. For a first-time author (I think this is his first book) he's incredibly confident and plunges us right into a Russian-inspired fantasy world full of evil mind-controlling angels and alternate realities and hallucinations that might not be hallucinations and giant trolls and spies and disillusioned police investigators and a forest full of Bad Things that stretches on forever and mobile spirits and bloody revolutions and city-destroying floods... and that's just a typical Tuesday! (haha)
In other words, too many notes, especially for a book that's only 303 pages. But Higgins is a very good and engaging writer who knows how to keep the action moving and trusts the audience to figure out the rules for themselves, and I will likely move on to book #2 because I liked his characters and want to know what happens to them. Even though his world is stuffed to the rafters in a small space, I still want to learn its secrets.
So I'm generously giving Wolfhound Century 3.5 stars rounded up.
Note: one trope I hate in narrative works of art is absurd coincidences. For example, our main character talks about the challenges of finding the right people for his investigation in a city of a million people. Then it turns out his only contact in the city happens to be 1 degree of separation from almost everybody relevant to the case. What are the chances! Well, that's what you're going to get in a 300 page novel, I suppose.
June 17, 2014
This review originally appeared on my blog, Books Without Any Pictures:
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/20...
Overview
Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins is set in a SF/F world that resembles Soviet Russia. Many years ago, angels fell from the sky. Most of them were dead, but the event still changed the world. Angel flesh was used for biotech, which manifests itself in more of a fantasy way with strange monstrous creations. The Vlast, a totalitarian state, began to emerge, and now intellectuals are persecuted and there’s great suffering throughout the land. And yet, there’s still hope, because of the Pollandore, which is a version of the world as it was before the angels fell, and that version of the world can perhaps one day be restored.
So there’s this guy named Vissarion Lom. He’s a police officer, and somehow he’s managed to remain idealistic even as shit’s going down all around him. One day, he gets a secret assignment to trail a man named Josef Kantor, a dangerous revolutionary who leaves a bloody path in his wake. While trailing Kantor, he learns that the world has become much more corrupt than he ever could have imagined. If the Pollandore isn’t opened soon, there may be no return…
Strengths
-Fascinating world that blends together elements of sci-fi and fantasy. We slowly realize that the angels are more like aliens than religious beings.
-Lots of interwoven multifaceted characters who all play a part in the story.
-Russia. Enough said.
-The linguistic richness of the story. See Anton’s post for more detail.
Weaknesses
-I was more than halfway through the book before I realized that Lom was the protagonist.
-The book doesn’t end, which means that unless you read the sequel, you’ll be left with unresolved burning questions.
Verdict
Wolfhound Century was a fascinating novel. It’s the sort of book that will make you think; richly imaginative, dense but rewarding. I’d recommend it.
http://bookswithoutanypictures.com/20...
Overview
Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins is set in a SF/F world that resembles Soviet Russia. Many years ago, angels fell from the sky. Most of them were dead, but the event still changed the world. Angel flesh was used for biotech, which manifests itself in more of a fantasy way with strange monstrous creations. The Vlast, a totalitarian state, began to emerge, and now intellectuals are persecuted and there’s great suffering throughout the land. And yet, there’s still hope, because of the Pollandore, which is a version of the world as it was before the angels fell, and that version of the world can perhaps one day be restored.
So there’s this guy named Vissarion Lom. He’s a police officer, and somehow he’s managed to remain idealistic even as shit’s going down all around him. One day, he gets a secret assignment to trail a man named Josef Kantor, a dangerous revolutionary who leaves a bloody path in his wake. While trailing Kantor, he learns that the world has become much more corrupt than he ever could have imagined. If the Pollandore isn’t opened soon, there may be no return…
Strengths
-Fascinating world that blends together elements of sci-fi and fantasy. We slowly realize that the angels are more like aliens than religious beings.
-Lots of interwoven multifaceted characters who all play a part in the story.
-Russia. Enough said.
-The linguistic richness of the story. See Anton’s post for more detail.
Weaknesses
-I was more than halfway through the book before I realized that Lom was the protagonist.
-The book doesn’t end, which means that unless you read the sequel, you’ll be left with unresolved burning questions.
Verdict
Wolfhound Century was a fascinating novel. It’s the sort of book that will make you think; richly imaginative, dense but rewarding. I’d recommend it.
January 22, 2014
Wolfhound Century is a Fantasy novel set in a kind of alternative totalitarian Russia (The Vlast) which is locked in long term war they are losing. On top of this there is a fallen angel trapped but exerting a dark influence on proceedings while the broken bits of other dead angels are used in varying ways for power or control . The plot follows Lom , a provincial policeman with a mysterious past even he doesn’t know about , as he comes to the capital to investigate a revolutionary leader and unearths a mass of corruption .
I very nearly dismissed this book as the title put me off a little, it sounded too much like a poolside spy thriller which I avoid at all costs. A bit of Twitter buzz turned me on to what the book was actually about and I decided to give it a try.
The Russian style names and words jarred a little for me at the start and I found it hard to take the details in . I struggled for the first few chapters because of this . But quite suddenly I found myself dragged in by the whole story and really enjoyed it.
It’s quite fast paced, intriguing , full of interesting ideas and characters and left me guessing the whole time.
It read like a good crime noir sitting on top of a well thought out well-developed fantasy world.
The ending is very exciting but leaves so much open for a sequel which I am really looking forward to.
Higgins proves to have a great imagination and I’m so glad I changed my mind on this book.
I very nearly dismissed this book as the title put me off a little, it sounded too much like a poolside spy thriller which I avoid at all costs. A bit of Twitter buzz turned me on to what the book was actually about and I decided to give it a try.
The Russian style names and words jarred a little for me at the start and I found it hard to take the details in . I struggled for the first few chapters because of this . But quite suddenly I found myself dragged in by the whole story and really enjoyed it.
It’s quite fast paced, intriguing , full of interesting ideas and characters and left me guessing the whole time.
It read like a good crime noir sitting on top of a well thought out well-developed fantasy world.
The ending is very exciting but leaves so much open for a sequel which I am really looking forward to.
Higgins proves to have a great imagination and I’m so glad I changed my mind on this book.
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