phungus's Full Review: E. E. Knight - Way of the Wolf
E.E. Knight’s Way of the Wolf is the first book in this author’s long-running Vampire Earth series, which has grown to include six volumes. The seventh book is due out this July. This is an amazing piece of science fiction that fans of post-apocalyptic series will surely enjoy. I can’t wait to get into the next book.
I bought this book on a whim. I had a few dollars credit left on a gift card and one day spent the better part of my work lunch hour in a bookstore trying to find something to buy with my remaining credit. After looking at literally everything on the Sci-Fi and Fantasy shelves, which is where I get most of my books, I ended up buying this one. I thought the cover looked kind of cool and I dig serial stories because the books wouldn’t spawn so many sequels if they sucked.
In a nutshell, this book is set a few decades into the future where vampires have taken over the Earth and humans are basically their slaves. Humans are allowed some sense of normalcy, but only if they serve part of the master purpose. No matter what they do, the vampires will only think of them as food. The vampires have instituted ways of controlling the population as a means of herd control, and they use other humans as informants and leaders in exchange for privileges like money, sex, and not being eaten. The central character in all of these books is a guy named Valentine, and the series follows his military career. He’s like the ultimate soldier when it comes to beating the vampires and helping other people survive without being slaves.
It’s very easy to liken the situation described in this book to the Nazi occupation of some areas of Europe during World War II. Just like in this book, there were people in Europe who actually tried to help the Nazis just to stay alive. There were also many people who did all they could to resist them, but it was like trying to put out a fire with a glass of water. At its very roots, this is a story about people caught up in a world where they have lost all control over their lives, and life and death is dictated by a totalitarian government that cares nothing for them.
I actually expected this to be a very violent pseudo-military type story about soldiers fighting vampires, but it ended up being something a little different. It is about soldiers and vampires, but more like the young resistance effort in the movie Red Dawn and not some huge military effort. In the future described in this book, the vampires are running the show and most humans bow to them in order to stay alive. The soldiers in this book are part of a very small group of resistance fighters who are trying to find ways to overthrow the vampire rule. There’s a little bit of action here and there, but this story is mostly about avoiding detection rather than fighting vampires head-on.
The author goes into great detail describing the way this new society works, and that’s what makes it such an engrossing read. It has been a long while since I found myself getting so wrapped up in a story like this one. I’ve read countless other books that present these big situations with lots of detail, and often they tend to be boring. For example, the Wheel of Time series. This book balances intrigue with information, and it shows both the inner workings of the society as well as life on the fringe. I thought it was brilliantly written.
The vampires in this book are not cliche in any way, which made me very thankful. Rather than just suck blood, they actually feed off people’s aura, which is like stealing their life essence. To them, it is like a drug. To a human, it just means they rip your chest open and suck your guts out. The vampires are so attuned to human life essence that they can sense other people enough to individually identify them, so the soldiers learn how to block these essence detections. This can lead to some tense situations when the soldiers go behind enemy lines.
The title of this book, Way of the Wolf is drawn from the name of the soldiers in the story. They are called Wolves, and are sort of like the grunts in the underground military resistance. The next book is about a group of soldiers called Cats, and they are known for being extra stealthy and good at working alone. That should make for some interesting reading.
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