Wolf at the Door, by J. Damask

[rachelmanija]

I am Jan Xu. Mother, ex-teacher, daughter and wolf. My family is all Lang, Mandarin Chinese for "wolf." We live among the human population of Singapore, looking like any ethnic Singapore-born Chinese. We have adopted the culture of our human counterparts, becoming human. Yet in our chests beat the hearts of wolves, our voices the howls of distant hunters.

An urban fantasy by a Singaporean author who may be better-known to you by her real name, Joyce Chng. While A Wolf at the Door had some problems, it was one of the few recent urban fantasies which I've even liked enough to finish. (By "urban fantasy" I mean the modern "hot and/or wisecracking person kicks supernatural ass in modern times," not the Emma Bull/Charles de Lint "magic in the city" books. Damask's book bridges those categories.)

Most urban fantasy, of the "kicks supernatural ass" variety, fails to hold my interest; it feels bland, plasticky, dull. In what I've read, the protagonists rarely have any relationships outside of romances or power dynamics with their vampire clan/werewolf pack/sugar glider flock, the landscapes tend toward generic American cities, and there's nothing going on other than magic spells, politicking among the pack, romance, and fighting: no details of life that make a world feel real.

Damask doesn't follow any of those patterns. Her Singapore feels completely real, and is a character in its own right. The characters have many relationships of different types: familial, pack, friendships. Jan is happily married and has two young daughters/pups. In fact, the best parts of the book involve daily life as a Singaporean werewolf.

Where the book falls down is plot and structure. There are two timelines running in parallel, one in the present and one in the past. They are poorly divided, sometimes marked "past" and sometimes not (and occasionally marked "past" when they're actually in the present). The storyline in the past is underdeveloped, with way too much tell and not enough show, and is not strongly connected to the present storyline. The present storyline is better, but oddly paced.

Five stars for atmosphere, three for character and prose (sometimes awkward, sometimes quite good), two for structure. But like I said: this is the only urban fantasy I've read all year that I actually finished. The world and setting are very, very good. Also, it's only $1.99 on Amazon: Wolf At the Door

Comments

[kore]

Also hmm, have you tried Caitlin Kiernan's -- middle-period books I guess they would be? Her first novel, Silk, was kind of ehh, but there's a diptych (basically) after that called Threshold and Low Red Moon that I really like -- lots of good characters, the writing's more controlled, and some genuinely creepy stuff. There's also a new comic out called Alabaster Wolves about one character from those stories, that looks quite good.

The next two in the series, Murder of Angels and Daughter of Hounds, fizzle badly (especially the latter one) and with depressing predictability I don't like her more recent books that have been praised to the skies (Red Tree, Drowning Girl). But Threshold and Low Red Moon were quite good - urban fantasy, but in the deep South, with lots of local colour and detail, and a kind of Lovecraftian ethos.

[rachelmanija]

I haven't, but she's been recced to me before. Doesn't one have a schizophrenic heroine?

[kore]

Yeah, that's Red Tree, basically - one reason why I didn't like it much. That's not either Threshold or Low Red Moon, unless you consider one character in it nuts, which she might be but probably isn't - the text goes back a forth a little on that. (Those books also have things in them that drive you nuts, so....) The Schrödinger-esque aspect was one reason why I liked those books. In Red Tree/Drowning Girl it's more like she just goes off into schizophrenic thinking fully wheeeee, which 1) so not for me and 2) seen it done better elsewhere, frankly.

I dunno what happened after T and LRM - Murder of Angels was iffy, but Daughter of Hounds was just a hot mess, despite some good characterization. I'd probably rank her books thusly:

1 - Threshold
2 - Low Red Moon
3 - Silk
4 - Murder of Angels
5 - Daughter of Hounds
6 - The Drowning Girl
7 - The Red Tree

Bear in mind that probably everyone else who has reviewed her ever has the exact opposite of this ranking, I bet. At least from what I've seen a lot of genre critics raved about the last two. But they were just really chilly and off-putting for me.