The Wolf's Curse (Jessica Vitalis)

The Wolf's Curse
Jessica Vitalis
Greenwillow Books
Fiction, MG Fantasy
***+ (Okay/Good)

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.

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