3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Witches, March 30, 2011
This review is from: Wolves Among Us: A Novel (Paperback)
Shades of Salem Witch Trials! This historic novel so scared me, that I actually had to put it down and walk away. Of course, I did pick it back up and finish reading it. I am so very thankful that I live in the 21st Century and not the 16th.
I quickly connected to the protagonist, Mia, and her sickly child, Alma. What a heavy load of problems Mia bears. She's married to hard-to-please Bjorn, the stern sheriff and cares for his bedridden mother. Even the ladies of the small village shun her. This gives Mia a very lonely existence. I hurt for her. As the plot unfolds, I feared for her.
An extensive Author's Note section, along with Discussion Questions and Supernatural Housekeeping are all included at the end of the novel.
Thank you to Bonnie at Christian Fiction Blog Alliance and David C. Cook for my copy.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Ginger Garrett's best yet, April 4, 2011
This review is from: Wolves Among Us: A Novel (Paperback)
Having had mixed feelings about Ginger Garrett's prior books (I've read three prior to this one), I started Wolves Among Us with similar mixed feelings. I quickly found, to my pleasant surprise, that this is her most readable work to date, and I really enjoyed it. Wolves Among Us tells the story of a small village in 16th century Germany, shocked when the bodies of two murdered people are found one morning on the church steps. Looking for assistance to help him find and apprehend the murderer, the village priest summons an Inquisitor. Almost as soon as the Inquisitor arrives, the priest realizes he has made a grave mistake; however, it is too late for him to close the Pandora's box, and soon his village is torn apart by witch hunt fever. There are truly wolves lurking among the people, both human wolves in the village, and actual wolves in the woods just outside the village.
It is Ginger Garrett's best book so far for several reasons. First of all, although this was originally supposed to be a continuation of the Chronicles of the Scribe series, it ended up being a stand-alone book. There are no scribe scenes, and no 21st century women transported back in time to expiate their sins. Both of which are huge pluses. However, for those readers who truly enjoyed the passages with the scribes, Ms. Garrett includes a bonus chapter at the back that continues the saga of Marisska.
Secondly, this book, although employing Garrett's characteristic surreal and somewhat disjointed style, is the most coherent of her books. Although it starts off a bit "jerky", it quickly smoothes out and begins to flow, and it is not at all confusing for the reader to follow the narrative and understand what is going on. And, in fact, Garrett's unique style is particularly well-suited to the subject matter of Wolves Among Us; she effectively creates a mood that conveys to the reader, at least in small part, how terrifying it must have been for women living during the times and places of witch trials. It was a time when people were bound by superstition, and it was a male- and church-dominated culture in which womens' voices counted for nothing.
Another strength of Ginger Garrett's writing is that things don't necessarily end up happily ever after for her main characters; in fact, quite often they don't, and that element of uncertainty keeps you reading. Also, she has an ability to describe some things in such a way that they seem graphically real (for instance, the sights and smells of the forest, or the horrible condition of the witch in the cage), while leaving other things curiously undescribed (namely, what people look like. We're given only the slightest description of what some characters looked like, and no description at all of what the main characters looked like).
There are really only two "discrepancies" I found in this book, and perhaps they are not discrepancies but just my own misunderstanding. The first was the night when Mia heard the woman murdered right outside her door. She had left her shutters open, meaning that the windows were wide open. Why would she leave her shutters open at night? And on an early spring night at that, when the weather was still very cold and rainy?
My second question has to do with the distribution of Tyndale's Bibles. Although I do know he worked with a printer in Germany to produce his Bibles, it has always been my understanding that he printed Bibles in English and shipped them to Great Britain for distribution in England and Scotland. Yet Garrett has him distributing his Bibles in Germany. Why would he have distributed English Bibles among German-speaking people?
Although I wasn't expecting to read any more of Ginger Garrett's books after finishing her scribe series, I was so pleased with this one that I look forward to reading whatever she comes out with next.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
