The Wolf Hour (Sara Lewis Holmes)

The Wolf Hour
Sara Lewis Holmes
Arthur A. Levine Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION: The forest of the Puszcza holds innumerable dangers for any wayward soul who ventures into its depths. The worst danger, though, is the Stories. The tales so many are familiar with, the ones their mothers told them (who heard the tale from their mothers, and their mothers, back to the beginning), echo and reverberate through the forest to this day, playing again and again. When caught in a Story, a girl might forget who she is or where she's from, only that she needs to take a basket to Grandma's house (even if she never in her life had a grandmother before)... and a wolf might forget their pack and cubs and become obsessed with devouring a child. It is not a place to travel lightly, if one must travel there at all. Even the animals who live there are wary of its tricks and deadly tales.
Magia knows the Puszcza is dangerous, but still longs to follow in her Tata's footsteps and become a woodcutter like him. The wood of the forest burns longer than any on the fringes, but only those who wear red might venture there safely, or as safely as one can in a place where stories might spring to life and snare you in its depths at any step. But Magia's mama wants to send her to the city instead, using her voice to build a better and safer life away from the woods. She can't imagine ever being happy away from the forest - and when Tata hesitates to teach her, she crafts her own red cap and sets out to learn herself. Only what she finds is far worse than anything she ever imagined, even after being raised on the tales of the Puszcza's deceptive ways.
Martin the wolf was raised in a tower of books... but not story books, just books of facts. His mother warned him about the dangers of Stories in their woodland home, how they could trap a wolf and turn them into something, and someone, they were not - dooming them to death in pursuit of pigs or wayward humans. That is what happened to Martin's father, and she is determined not to lose her one son the same way. Only when she disappears, shy Martin decides to go searching for her... and learns the terrible truth of his mother's warnings, only too late.
The tales of wolf and girl become entwined in the depths of the Puszcza, in a Story unlike any that have played out beneath its branches... a story that may not have room for a happy ending.

REVIEW: For the most part, I enjoyed this tale, a somewhat light and self-aware take on fairy tales that mashes up elements of "The Three Little Pigs", "Little Red Riding Hood", and even perhaps a touch of Baba Yaga around the edges, among other familiar elements. Magia and her family live in the shadow of the storybook woods, while her father risks its depths daily, but fully understand the risks it entails. Early on, in her quest to convince Tata she's ready to train as a woodcutter, she learns just how dangerous it really is when she dons his red cap and realizes it's not just a fashion choice; the red threads bite into the scalp, drawing blood even, but their prickling, stinging direction is the only way a body can avoid becoming lost in the forest or in a Story... and even then it can only hint and guide, not prevent disaster when it befalls, as Magia learns the hard way with her own homemade red cap. This is just the first taste of the darkness beneath the stories. There are also the three little pigs who are coerced into their own gruesome role in the repeating Story they must play out, blackmailed by a wicked witch for reasons that become clear later on... and it's with the pigs that I first started noting a hint of dissatisfaction and discordance in the tale. I honestly think it would've been a stronger story without them, especially by the end. The heart of the tale is the unexpected bond that forms between young Magia and the wayward young wolf Martin, who was by far my favorite character in the story (though Magia's not bad and carries her own weight). Poor Martin is utterly unprepared for the world beyond his mother's tower, a world that cares not a whit for the endless array of words and facts he's memorized from the thousands of books he was raised on. (There are shades of the Wyverary from Catherynne M. Valente's Fairyland series in him at times.) By the time he encounters Magia, he's at the end of his wits and spirit in a very real sense, after discovering what happened to his mother and how terrible a Story can truly be, how inescapable their traps if they managed to snare even his cautious mom. Both of them end up in much darker places afterwards, scarred literally and figuratively. When they meet again, will they even remember each other, or will the Story they are caught up in be too powerful to break?
When I said earlier that I enjoyed this tale "for the most part", it's the later bits that started shaking my enjoyment. For all that it was not shy about its darkness and landing its emotional punches (if not too graphically, given the age range; there's a lot of pain and death here, a little closer to the original fairy tales rather than the sanitized cartoon versions many might think of), toward the end I started feeling those punches being pulled. The three pigs in particular started feeling out of place, too shallow and not developed enough compared to Martin and Magia or even their mutual enemy. The ending itself has a touch of deus ex machina about it and lacked sufficient follow-through, and the emotional payoff for the leads felt rushed. It took me a bit of thinking to decide if these late problems colored my reactions enough to drag it down a half-star in the ratings. I ultimately decided to give it the benefit of the doubt, because when this story works it works very well, but will admit that it was a very, very close call. (I really do think it would've been a better story overall without the danged pigs, or with the pigs reworked enough to mesh better with the rest of the story. They felt a bit like a kazoo that kept piping up in a string quartet, loud and out of place.)

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