The Wolf's Curse
Jessica Vitalis
Greenwillow Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy
Themes: Canids, Ghosts
***+
Description
Gauge was barely five years old the first time he saw the Great White Wolf - a wolf nobody in his village but him could see.
That night, the Lord Mayor's wife died suddenly. The connection could not have been clearer: Gauge was a Voyant, and he must
have summoned the Wolf for murder. The law demands he be "sent to sea", put out onto the waves in a boat with no oars: a death
sentence. Instead, Gauge's carpenter grandpapa hid him away in his workshop, teaching the boy the trade while hiding him from
the Lord Mayor and the rest of the village. But Gauge still sees the Wolf... and he sees it take the soul from Grandpapa the
night the old man dies.
When Gauge is found out to have survived his original death sentence, he flees, finding his way to the shop of a local
blacksmith and his kindly daughter Roux. She won't believe Gauge is evil, no matter what the village says about Voyants. But
the Wolf seems to be stealing souls from the dead, even before the burial rituals can release them from their bodies and send
them on their way to the Sea-in-the-Sky. It may be that Gauge is the only one to stop the beast.
Or it may be that neither Gauge nor Roux nor anyone else in the village truly understand death or the Wolf...
Review
This is a story centered around death: the grief of loss, the anger often felt by those left behind, the rituals that can
provide closure or simply add to the great burdens - financial and emotional - placed upon the mourners, and the stories people
tell themselves about death and the afterlife.
The Wolf, who narrates the tale, is merely an agent, not an instigator of death,
but upon her back is placed all manner of blame for that which nobody can control, blame that spreads to those few who can see
her in her rounds. Gauge grows to fear and hate the Wolf like the rest of his village, blaming his ability to even see her for
his ostracization and his lonely years hidden away in his grandfather's carpentry shop, then blaming it for the deaths in the
village, for thwarting the rituals that he has been told release a soul. In this, he is borderline unbelievably naive given his
age, even for a boy overprotected by a well-meaning but fearful relative. Nor is he the only one his age so credulous; Roux,
facing her own tragedy, joins him in blaming the Wolf and contriving to end her, leaping to wild conclusions when what they
learn of death doesn't add up with what they believe or what they've been told. Throughout Gauge's tale, as he struggles not
only to avoid death at the hands of the Lord Mayor's guards and fearful villages but "avenge" his lost grandfather and expose
the "truth" of the Wolf, his grief keeps reminding him of the man he lost, the life that is over. Again and again, his mind
wanders on tangents about moments great and small with his grandpapa... and again, then again, then once again for good measure,
just in case the audience wasn't paying attention. Seriously, I get that Vitalis was working to address the overwhelming nature
of grief, and perhaps justify some of Gauge's less-intelligent conclusions (and increasingly-hard-to-sustain naivete about
death), but at some point overkill is just plain overkill. Along the way, the story touches on a few less pleasant aspects of
the death industry, how the traditions and rituals built up around death can morph into harmful superstitions that hurt more
than they help, how families can be targeted and even exploited in their hour of grief, forced to pay for elaborate trappings
and coffins (or vessels, in this world's case; they're a seafaring culture, and send their loved ones off in custom built small
boats of varying intricacy) that ultimately have nothing to do with speeding loved ones to the afterlife or easing their own
pain any faster. This is part of what convinces Gauge and Roux that there must be some "conspiracy" behind death in the village,
the unfairness of how different families are treated and the exorbitant bills they're saddled with afterwards. The
long-suffering Wolf often despairs of Gauge ever figuring out the truth about her role and the nature of death... and he must
figure it out, because Voyants like him are a necessary part of the cycle in his country, for all that the people are fearful
of them and misunderstand their special sight. By the end, of course, Gauge has learned a lot - and so, remarkably, has the
Wolf.
On the one hand, there's a lot to like about this story. It delves deep into the nature of death and grief, how fear and anger
can become twisted up in desperate times, and how stories and rituals can provide both soothing comfort and, when taken too far,
obstacles to healing. The setting is decently described, and there's often a little more than first appearances indicate to the
various characters. On the other, it wallows overmuch in Gauge's memories and grief, sometimes barely progressing the story at
all before slipping into yet another memory or reminder of his loss, or yet another anger-fueled misconception about death. That,
and Gauge's and Roux's increasingly untenable inability to understand death for their ages (especially Roux, who wasn't
sheltered nearly as much as Gauge and therefore should have been a little more savvy), were enough to shave a half-star off the
rating.