Ice Age Dramas in Sisters of the Wolf | Book Review

【 SISTERS OF THE WOLF 】

A really cool story set tens of thousands of years in the past about the first peoples of Canada.

Genre: Historical Fiction
Author: Patricia Miller-Schroeder
Published: August 2021
Publisher: Dundurn Press
Pages: 336 (paperback)

Thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this for review

This was sooo interesting and I found the setting and era a lot of fun to explore. The short version of my opinion is that the plot is fast-paced and action-packed, but also somehow ends up with not a lot happening, yet the author’s purpose of the book delivered in spades.

The foreword with this was that Miller-Schroeder wanted to imagine what life might have been like for the first peoples of Canada and set a story in the ice age. This isn’t something I’ve ever explored before (outside of Ice Age, that is) so I loved taking an imagined peep back at this time.

It follows two girls from two different tribes, with their paths eventually crossing. What they encounter throughout the book was such high intensity stuff – plenty of people being killed and a real sense of the plight to survive. But it is a lot of running and running and running, and I wish we had fewer pure-action scenes and more time for other stuff to happen.

There were also strong themes of found family and reconciliation, which I thought was lovely. Not only that, but I think the whimsy of the spirit guides will appeal to many people. I can’t speak for how well that representation was done, but from my perspective I enjoyed it and loved following the characters as they heed the signs from spirits along their journey.

I also enjoyed the additional information at the back discussing the author’s anthropological research into this time. I loved the way she wove these facts and historical details into the story to give it a sense of authenticity.

All in all, this was good! Worth the read if you come across it, though I’d love to explore this kind of storyline with further developed characters and a plot line with more structure/purpose padded in other than simply running away from the bad guy. But again, the snapshot of the past was more the author’s intention than the rest of it, so I feel this delivered on its promise.