Tumperkin’s Take:
Alpha & Omega/ Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs
Although Alpha & Omega and Cry Wolf are separate works, I’m going to review them together. A&O, a novella, introduces the reader to Charles and Anna, the eponymous Alpha and Omega respectively. CW picks up where A&O left off and takes us to a point where Charles and Anna commit to one another as mates.
My reading experience of these two books was somewhat unsettled by the fact that I read CW first, then A&O (my fault) which was rather like starting at chapter 4, reading to the end then going back and reading chapters 1 to 3. The reason for this was that I decided to read this book after reading Janine’s comments regarding this series on Dear Author. However, I didn’t pick up one bit of crucial information which was that the first bit of the story was in a separate novella.
Although I don’t read a lot of paranormal romance, a number of werewolf books have found their way into my hands over the years and as it happens, I find the werewolf the most appealing of the kitchen-or-garden-variety-paranormal-creatures out there. I like the conceit of there being a pack and rules of behaviour that the characters have to negotiate their way round. I like the animalistic stuff, both the horror aspect and the liberation-of-nature aspect. One aspect I’m less keen on (though this is by no means limited to werewolves) is the fated mates trope. The lack of free will can (doesn’t always, but can) detract from the romance for me.
I can also get impatient with external/non-romance plots. Undoubtedly that is because I am first and foremost a romance reader. So whilst some readers may primarily appreciate the urban fantasy aspects of a book like this and find the romance of subsidiary appeal, for me, the non-romance aspects are essentially setting, against which I want to see the romance play out.
The story: Charles is the son of The Marrock, the leader of all werewolves a.k.a. Bran. Charles is Bran’s enforcer, a strong alpha werewolf who essentially deputises for his father. In A&O, Charles is sent to Chicago to investigate irregularities in Anna’s pack, following a call Anna made to Bran in defiance of her own Alpha, Leo. Charles discovers that not only was Anna changed against her will, in defiance of werewolf laws, but that she has been brutally abused by her pack – and she is not the only one.
Anna believes herself to be a submissive wolf, ‘the lowest of the low’ as she describes herself. But in fact Charles recognises her as an Omega, a wolf that is outside the normal pack structure and hence does not feel compelled either to fight or obey dominant wolves. Instead, her presence has a calming effect on the whole pack. Anna’s ignorance about her true nature and her brutalisation at the hands of her pack have, however, convinced her that she is submissive and she acts towards Charles accordingly. Charles recognises that Anna is his mate and tells her, letting her know that he wants to court her.
A&O is a pretty short novella, and the story moves along swiftly towards a final showdown with Anna’s pack during which Charles is wounded with slow-to-heal silver bullets. At the end of A&O, 36 hours after their first meeting, Anna agrees to go back to Montana with Charles. CW picks up the story at that immediate point. Coming into the story at this point as a new reader, I was immediately frustrated. I was unaware of the existence of the A&O novella but quickly realised that a crucial part of Charles and Anna’s story was missing. At first I wondered if this was going to be told in flashback until I finally visited Janine’s post again and discovered A&O. By that time, however, I was well into CW and ended up finishing it before A&O arrived.
The first few chapters of CW referred back to the events of A&O a fair amount so I was aware of the salient facts, but not the emotional journey the characters had been on. This resulted in a fair bit of ‘had’-toned exposition at the outset that gave the story a static feel for me initially. However, about a quarter of the way in, this stopped, and the story got going properly. On the one hand, this meant that I could understand where the characters were coming from despite not having read A&O; on the other hand it struck me as unsatisfactory even if I had read A&O first. To me, A&O and CW read like one book that had been artificially separated.
At the start of CW, Anna and Charles head back to Montana. We see their first hours together as a couple and get a sense of two people who are strongly drawn to one another but whose natures and experiences make it difficult for them to overcome their barriers. Anna has been abused and believes she hates sex. Charles has cultivated a serious, silent persona and doesn’t get close to anyone because he knows he may one day have to take action against them. He is used to going it alone and shutting others out.
Very soon after their arrival, Bran sends Charles on another mission, into the mountains of Montana in winter after what Bran thinks is a rogue werewolf killing hikers. When Anna insists on accompanying the still-wounded Charles, Bran encourages her. The rest of the novel is taken up with Charles and Anna’s investigation into the murders and what they find in the mountains. In the midst of that, they become closer and the barriers begin to come down between them. The novel closes with them marrying, albeit their relationship is still in its early days (and I gather, also the subject of the next book).
The external plots of both A&O and CW are decent enough. However, as I said, I tend to concentrate on the romance arc. This is one of the reasons I’m reviewing A&O and CW together – whilst there are two distinct external plots, there is a single romance arc.
I liked Charles a great deal. He is strong and dominant without being overbearing. He is kind too but because his kindness is hidden behind an cold mask, it is easily missed. There are frequent references to his being impassive and difficult to read and we see other characters reacting to him quite negatively at times. But Anna seems to understand him very well and not in a way that came across as facile.
Anna is a very raw character. She’s been badly treated and she needs just what Charles is offering. I quite liked the fact that whilst Anna’s natural character is clearly not submissive and subdued, she has been beaten down by her experiences. One of my pet peeves is characters who don’t seem to be affected by bad experiences, as though it’s somehow weak to react in a natural manner to such things. Briggs lets us see Anna (very gradually) build up her confidence and I had a smile on my face at the end of CW when she and Charles are playing together as wolves in the snow.
Which brings me to the fated mates thing. This is never going to be a favourite trope for me. Having said that, it worked fairly well for me in this book. Charles and Anna did feel right for each other. He was like a harbour for her, strong against the big bad world; and she was like the one person capable of really understanding him, partly because of her omega nature which didn’t react in the usual way to such a dominant wolf. What I missed though – and what I look for in my romance reading – is that sense you get from the characters about why they have fallen for this particular person. And that wasn’t something I got a strong sense of A&O/CW. There are brief physical descriptions of the characters in A&O (though, frustratingly, not so much in CW) – Anna has ‘whisky-coloured’ curls and is ‘pretty’; Charles has long black hair and native-American features – but there is no sense of them taking delight in each other’s person, and I missed that. I suppose the answer to that might be that it’s not necessary because Charles and Anna’s love goes deeper than the merely physical, but given that the mate bond seems to arise without consideration of physical or spiritual issues, that’s not an answer that fully satisfies me.
Briggs’ prose I found rather somewhat understated. As I was reading, I was slightly disappointed by that. However, later, when I reflected on it more, I came to think two things. The first was that the dominant character in CW is Charles, and the flattish prose seemed to suit his silent, monosyllabic character. The second thing was that I wonder if Briggs is one of those writers for whom the prose is a pure vehicle for the story. I’ve found a few other authors’ prose to be like this – straight and almost journalistic in its effectiveness. It can be slightly underwhelming as you read but then you realise that it’s delivering the story effectively.
All in all, I didn’t love this book but I did like it. It’s a competent, enjoyable read that strangely grew on me more with hindsight. And I liked the characters. In the end though, I craved more romance and that’s more a question of reader preference than a criticism of the book itself.
Jessica’s Rejoinder:
I agree with pretty much all that Tumperkin says. Ironically, I downloaded the novella without realizing it was not the novel we had agreed to read. So quite by accident, I read them in the proper order! I did enjoy them, but I think my personal tastes run to other kinds of stories. I’ll add a few observations:
1. It is a matter of personal taste that I tend not to like werewolf romances, or actually any romances which utilize the “two natured” trope, be it demons, shapeshifters, or groundhogs. It’s just very hard to do this well. In this book, much like the daemons in Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, or Rhage, the dragon-vamp in J.R. Ward’s Lover Eternal, the wolf is really “other”, and not just an aspect of the human self. The characters refer to their wolves in the third person, or possessive, and seem to have trouble not only controlling their wolves, but sussing out what their wolves are “thinking” and feeling. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out things, like, why is the wolf mind still present when the wolf body is gone? And why does Anna think like human Anna when she is in wolf form (shouldn’t those pages be a series of grunts and barks?). Nevertheless, the dual identity creates a very concrete metaphysically real kind of internal conflict with the…
2. Mating concept, because two wolves can recognize each other as mates without their human counterparts agreeing. Like Tumperkin said, we all hate it when “mating” takes the place of “relationship”, and that did not happen here. I think its function in the paranormal universe is similiar to functions in many other romance genres: it keeps the couple together long enough to become a couple. In that sense, it is like an arranged marriage, or a wounded h/h who has to stay at the h/h’s house, or, in contemps, any arrangement that has them pushed together for a long period. The mating concept also allows authors to explain and explore intense sexual attraction between the h/h’s at a very early point in the relationship.
3. Charles was grievously injured by silver bullets in the novella and continued to be in a weakened state throughout the novel. I discovered that I find a wounded hero deeply unsettling and stress inducing. It really works for me to ramp up the suspense.
4. From a feminist point of view, Anna’s status as Omega is almost like an androgynous ideal. In the heydey of 1970s feminism, some folks thought we should do away with the two genders and adopt what came to be called mono-androgyny, one type of gender that blended the best of both. All of this has gone by the boards, historically, but I liked it that Anna was strong in a uniquely feminine way. I also liked it that Charles was not the Alpha. It is unusual to have a hero who is not the top dog.
5. I agree totally about the writing, which felt sort of “flat” or monotone to me, and reminds me of Anne Stuart and, in a way, some books by Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb. I love T’s observation about how it might function for a certain kind of writer.
6. The Native American aspect of Charles’ identity puzzled me: he got it from his mother, who was also a werewolf and a witch. So… what, if any, is the relationship between being a werewolf and being Native American? Or, for that matter being a witch?
7. I will say, that on paper it looks like so many of the things we love to hate or hate to love about paranormals are here — mating, possessiveness, the heroine rising like a phoenix from the ashes of sexual abuse, etc. — but they felt very fresh to me as Briggs wrote them. That was a major achievement, I thought.