The Silver Wolf by Alice Borchardt

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


DNF.
Long story short, this book is vile.
And not as in that is my opinion because I didn’t like, but as in it is written to be so.
From the very first chapter we are met with rape, violence, blood, vomit, and vile swearing, and everything about sex made horrid… It’s overboard.
I just DNFed another book before this one where nasty and disturbing was written in for the coolness factor, and this book make that one seem almost chaste in comparison.

One could have thought that unpleasant details were there to keep true to the medieval setting, but then the writing/language of this clearly sometimes forgot where we were supposed to be. We are in the dark ages, but dialogue may go like this:
‘Awkward.’
‘Whatever.’
or
‘Like hell.’ (said in a temple, none the less)
Not to mention excessive use of swears words, including cnt, fgt, and other c**suckers, in entirely too modern manner, inmh.
I’m not saying use Old English, but I do think some phrases and manners of speech are very modern inventions, and should be avoided in a historical world settings.

At first look, this book appeared like something I could love.
Dark ages, werewolves, magic, and romance really sounded like a combination right up my alley.
Unfortunately, I was completely turned off by the writing, and the excess of gore, and sexual violence.
I didn’t even make it past the first part. At first I thought once the MC would get out of her nasty situation in the beginning at the book, it would all pick up. Especially since the short glimpse at Maeniel seemed promising. But then Lucilla made appearance (and started groping the main character) and I gave up.
Excessively long and tedious beginning filled with senseless violence, rape, and swearing, and other disgusting details, for the sake of being disturbing, on a loop told me it was not worth wasting my time trying to get through it.
Utterly tasteless.

(For future, when a book has multiple mentions of the fact that the author is related to another famous writer on it, and the picture in the back is not a portrait, as it usually is, but a picture of them together, it should probably be a warning enough that they are not trying to sell the book with its content…)

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