Trolls and wyverns and wolves, oh my!
Oct. 9th, 2008 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bibliogrammaCompanion to Wolves, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear.
Some fantasy writers love to have humans and animals “bonding” together in some mysterious telepathic or empathic connection of mind, spirit and body – Lackey’s white, equine Companions and Tayledras bond birds, Gayle Greeno’s cat-like Ghatti, McCaffery’s dragons and fire lizards and watchwhers, Andre Norton’s kinkajous, meerkats and the like, to name just a few examples among many. It’s a sub-genre of fantasy unto itself, the companion animal fantasy. It’s certainly an appealing notion when you think about it, at a superficial level – never having to be alone again, but rather being accepted with the unconditional love and devotion we tend to associate with animals, plus all the imagined bonuses that come with having the option of seeing the world through an animal’s keener senses and commanding or at least negotiating access to the special or enhanced abilities the special “bond animals” often have. It surely sounds wonderful when you think of the relationship in terms of what the human wants from his or her companion animal, and how the human would choose to affect the companion animal.
In Companion to Wolves - as is suggested by the title, Monette and Bear have looked long and hard at the other half of the bond – what the animal wants to give to the human, and how the animal’s experiences affect the human. In this subversion of the traditional companion animal fantasy, it is the animal’s nature that determines how the bond works, and the humans must fit into their animal companions’ way of existence in order to make effective use of the animal’s abilities through the bond.
In a novel that draws on Germanic and Nordic myth and culture, it’s not at all surprising that the companion animals are wolves – pack animals with a complex social structure regulated by sex and dominance. The men who bond with the great trellwolves – mortal enemies of the trolls who repeatedly threaten the communities of humans scattered through the forests – must learn to fit into the social patterns of their lupine brothers and sisters, and when a bitch wolf goes into heat and the males fight for the privilege of attempting to cover her, their human companions – the wolfcarls – must follow suit, not just because of the surge of emotions that they feel during the bond, but because to do otherwise risks interfering with the only social organisation the wolves know and function within. Unlike McCaffery, who was never really comfortable dealing with the logical consequences of male riders of green dragons being driven into the sexual frenzy of their dragon’s mating flights, Monette and Bear are almost ruthlessly honest about how the mating and dominance displays of the wolves affect their human brothers.
Companion to Wolves is the story of an adolescent boy, Njall Gunnarson, son of a jarl or chief, who is claimed as a tithe-boy by the werthreat, the separate society of bonded wolves and men whose duty it is to protect the people of the towns and villages from marauding trolls and their war beasts, the wyrvens. Njall’s choice to go with the wolfcarl from the nearby werheall (wolfhall) will mean leaving behind everyting he knows, and facing the general animosity that wolfless men in this society often feel toward the wolfcarls, who are by necessity bisexual if not homosexual. His father is – for reasons that we discover later on in the tale – even more violently opposed to giving up his son to the werheall, but the tithe of young men to the werthreat is part of the agreement, the only way to maintain the fighting force of the werthreat, and so Njall goes with the wolf brothers, where he slowly learns about how this society of two species operates.
Life becomes more complicated – and the challenges of adapting to life as a wolfcarl more personally discomfiting – for young Njall, now called Isolfr, when he bonds with an alpha bitch pup or konigenwolf (queenwolf), and learns that his destiny, once the young female comes to full maturity, is to found, with his sisterwolf Viradechtis, a new werheall where he will necessarily become the partner, both sexually and as co-leader of the heall, the man whose wolfbrother Viradechtis chooses as mate.
But this book is more than just an exploration of how an society of bonded men and wolves might function, or a simple coming of age story. Before Isolfr and his sister wolf Viradechtis come of age, they, along with all the other wolfcarls , are faced with a growing threat from the north that may well spell the end of werheall and village alike. The northern trolls, who for generations have come south to raid the villages of men and then withdraw to their warrens, are on the move, and it will take more than an alliance of werthreat and wolfless men to defeat them.
I can’t say enough about the sense of reality I experienced while reading this book, Monette and Bear offer carefully constructed, well thought out worldbuilding, vital and memorable characters, and the kind of story that any skald would give his shield arm to sing.
More than that, each of the four intelligent species portrayed in the book – humans, trellwolves, trolls and svartalfar – present us with different perspectives on how sex, gender, fertility, reproduction and power can function as interrelated organising principles of societies. And even more than that, there is the way in which the novel tells us how societies and individuals that follow very different patterns can learn to communicate with each other if there is enough will, respect and compassion.
Some fantasy writers love to have humans and animals “bonding” together in some mysterious telepathic or empathic connection of mind, spirit and body – Lackey’s white, equine Companions and Tayledras bond birds, Gayle Greeno’s cat-like Ghatti, McCaffery’s dragons and fire lizards and watchwhers, Andre Norton’s kinkajous, meerkats and the like, to name just a few examples among many. It’s a sub-genre of fantasy unto itself, the companion animal fantasy. It’s certainly an appealing notion when you think about it, at a superficial level – never having to be alone again, but rather being accepted with the unconditional love and devotion we tend to associate with animals, plus all the imagined bonuses that come with having the option of seeing the world through an animal’s keener senses and commanding or at least negotiating access to the special or enhanced abilities the special “bond animals” often have. It surely sounds wonderful when you think of the relationship in terms of what the human wants from his or her companion animal, and how the human would choose to affect the companion animal.
In Companion to Wolves - as is suggested by the title, Monette and Bear have looked long and hard at the other half of the bond – what the animal wants to give to the human, and how the animal’s experiences affect the human. In this subversion of the traditional companion animal fantasy, it is the animal’s nature that determines how the bond works, and the humans must fit into their animal companions’ way of existence in order to make effective use of the animal’s abilities through the bond.
In a novel that draws on Germanic and Nordic myth and culture, it’s not at all surprising that the companion animals are wolves – pack animals with a complex social structure regulated by sex and dominance. The men who bond with the great trellwolves – mortal enemies of the trolls who repeatedly threaten the communities of humans scattered through the forests – must learn to fit into the social patterns of their lupine brothers and sisters, and when a bitch wolf goes into heat and the males fight for the privilege of attempting to cover her, their human companions – the wolfcarls – must follow suit, not just because of the surge of emotions that they feel during the bond, but because to do otherwise risks interfering with the only social organisation the wolves know and function within. Unlike McCaffery, who was never really comfortable dealing with the logical consequences of male riders of green dragons being driven into the sexual frenzy of their dragon’s mating flights, Monette and Bear are almost ruthlessly honest about how the mating and dominance displays of the wolves affect their human brothers.
Companion to Wolves is the story of an adolescent boy, Njall Gunnarson, son of a jarl or chief, who is claimed as a tithe-boy by the werthreat, the separate society of bonded wolves and men whose duty it is to protect the people of the towns and villages from marauding trolls and their war beasts, the wyrvens. Njall’s choice to go with the wolfcarl from the nearby werheall (wolfhall) will mean leaving behind everyting he knows, and facing the general animosity that wolfless men in this society often feel toward the wolfcarls, who are by necessity bisexual if not homosexual. His father is – for reasons that we discover later on in the tale – even more violently opposed to giving up his son to the werheall, but the tithe of young men to the werthreat is part of the agreement, the only way to maintain the fighting force of the werthreat, and so Njall goes with the wolf brothers, where he slowly learns about how this society of two species operates.
Life becomes more complicated – and the challenges of adapting to life as a wolfcarl more personally discomfiting – for young Njall, now called Isolfr, when he bonds with an alpha bitch pup or konigenwolf (queenwolf), and learns that his destiny, once the young female comes to full maturity, is to found, with his sisterwolf Viradechtis, a new werheall where he will necessarily become the partner, both sexually and as co-leader of the heall, the man whose wolfbrother Viradechtis chooses as mate.
But this book is more than just an exploration of how an society of bonded men and wolves might function, or a simple coming of age story. Before Isolfr and his sister wolf Viradechtis come of age, they, along with all the other wolfcarls , are faced with a growing threat from the north that may well spell the end of werheall and village alike. The northern trolls, who for generations have come south to raid the villages of men and then withdraw to their warrens, are on the move, and it will take more than an alliance of werthreat and wolfless men to defeat them.
I can’t say enough about the sense of reality I experienced while reading this book, Monette and Bear offer carefully constructed, well thought out worldbuilding, vital and memorable characters, and the kind of story that any skald would give his shield arm to sing.
More than that, each of the four intelligent species portrayed in the book – humans, trellwolves, trolls and svartalfar – present us with different perspectives on how sex, gender, fertility, reproduction and power can function as interrelated organising principles of societies. And even more than that, there is the way in which the novel tells us how societies and individuals that follow very different patterns can learn to communicate with each other if there is enough will, respect and compassion.
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Date: 2008-10-14 02:37 am (UTC)Just wanted to add: I distinctly remember a pack of male riders gathering together in preparation for a green dragon's rising and two male riders traveling together irresponsibly (given the dragon's imminent mating state) in the early Pern books. Perhaps McCaffery wasn't comfortable with it, but the implications were clear. It certainly seemed less emphasized in the later books, which were *very* hetero.
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Date: 2008-10-14 06:53 pm (UTC)Interestingly, her son Todd, who has taken over the franchise, is a lot more comfortable with the implications of sex among riders than McCaffrey herself was.
Many of the other books with human/animal mindbonds (Mercedes Lackey's books, for example) usually hand-wave the sex issue away with some combination of "companion animals are special and don't go into frenzied heat" and "it's possible to tone down the mindbond during mating so the partner who is mating doesn't affect the partner who isn't."
Anyway, I highly recommend Companion to Wolves - aside from the very careful creation of a realistic wolf/human society, it's got a lot to recommend it, especially if you've got a thing for Germanic/Nordic myth.