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Book Blog: Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin
I thought about this book for quite awhile before sitting down to write my review, which since the subject is triggering for some people, is under the following cut. The story concerns an alternate Third Reich, where Hitler won the war, with the action taking place in 1956. There are frequent references to the Shoah.
This is ostensibly a children’s book – imprint of Hachette Children’s Group – published in 2015. So very new, but it draws on an old and terrible past in its beautiful, almost poetic language that makes one think of a traditional fairy tale.
It is 1956 and the Nazis have won the war. In this world, 17-year-old Yael fights in the Resistance which struggles to hold on in Germany itself. She is an escaped survivor of a death camp where a doctor experimented on her and, as a side effect, gave her the ability to skinshift. Yael can wear any face she has studied, so long as it is human and female. For this reason, she is chosen to take the place of Nazi favourite Adele Wolfe, the girl who took the identity of her twin brother Felix to enter the Axis Tour, a motorcycle race from Berlin to Tokyo.
There’s a lot Yael doesn’t know about Adele, despite her briefings, including the nature of her relationship with fellow racer Luka Lowe, or her twin brother Felix who comes along on the race in a misguided effort to protect Adele. Racers have been known to die during the Tour and Adele, who won the last year, will be targeted by the other racers.
The world of this alternate Third Reich is fairly lightly sketched; we see mostly just what the teenaged racers from Germany and Japan see or think about, but enough to give chills. At one point they’re on a train and pass another train of cattle cars, full of ‘undesirables’ headed for the camps. There are the flashbacks for Yael of her childhood years spent in a concentration camp. And there are her wolves, which she had tattooed on her arm, five of them, to remember the family and friends who died there, plus the Russian resistance fighter who taught her the skills she would need for her mission; to get within arm’s reach of Adolf Hitler, and kill him.
The pace is fast and intriguing, but character development is not neglected. It becomes clear that Adele is an isolated, rather arrogant girl who seems not to want or need friends. So when Yael has to essentially take over her relationship with Luka, things get extremely complicated, as though she did not have enough to worry about.
I’m not going to spoiler the ending. It is both surprising and makes perfect sense. Readers should also know that there’s another book in the series on the way. Despite that, I think Wolf by Wolf does finish well. It’s plainly intended also to be educational, with a long author’s note at the end describing the real story of the Third Reich and how she has woven alternate history into it, plus questions for study and suggestions for further reading. Graudin writes:
The world within these pages could have been our own. For a time and in a place it was, and we should do our best not to forget that.
This is ostensibly a children’s book – imprint of Hachette Children’s Group – published in 2015. So very new, but it draws on an old and terrible past in its beautiful, almost poetic language that makes one think of a traditional fairy tale.
It is 1956 and the Nazis have won the war. In this world, 17-year-old Yael fights in the Resistance which struggles to hold on in Germany itself. She is an escaped survivor of a death camp where a doctor experimented on her and, as a side effect, gave her the ability to skinshift. Yael can wear any face she has studied, so long as it is human and female. For this reason, she is chosen to take the place of Nazi favourite Adele Wolfe, the girl who took the identity of her twin brother Felix to enter the Axis Tour, a motorcycle race from Berlin to Tokyo.
There’s a lot Yael doesn’t know about Adele, despite her briefings, including the nature of her relationship with fellow racer Luka Lowe, or her twin brother Felix who comes along on the race in a misguided effort to protect Adele. Racers have been known to die during the Tour and Adele, who won the last year, will be targeted by the other racers.
The world of this alternate Third Reich is fairly lightly sketched; we see mostly just what the teenaged racers from Germany and Japan see or think about, but enough to give chills. At one point they’re on a train and pass another train of cattle cars, full of ‘undesirables’ headed for the camps. There are the flashbacks for Yael of her childhood years spent in a concentration camp. And there are her wolves, which she had tattooed on her arm, five of them, to remember the family and friends who died there, plus the Russian resistance fighter who taught her the skills she would need for her mission; to get within arm’s reach of Adolf Hitler, and kill him.
The pace is fast and intriguing, but character development is not neglected. It becomes clear that Adele is an isolated, rather arrogant girl who seems not to want or need friends. So when Yael has to essentially take over her relationship with Luka, things get extremely complicated, as though she did not have enough to worry about.
I’m not going to spoiler the ending. It is both surprising and makes perfect sense. Readers should also know that there’s another book in the series on the way. Despite that, I think Wolf by Wolf does finish well. It’s plainly intended also to be educational, with a long author’s note at the end describing the real story of the Third Reich and how she has woven alternate history into it, plus questions for study and suggestions for further reading. Graudin writes:
The world within these pages could have been our own. For a time and in a place it was, and we should do our best not to forget that.