Wolfsong

TJ Klune
Completed 1/26/2025, Reviewed 1/27/2025
4 stars

I just love TJ Klune.  I had the pleasure of reading his most recent novel Somewhere Beyond the Sea towards the end of last year.  This year, one of my challenges is to read a bunch of his back catalog.  This book is the first of the Green Creek series.  It has recently been republished by Tor, as it was originally either self-published or published by a small indie house.  Anyway, I loved this book.  It’s a gay werewolf romance that includes themes of family, love, and acceptance.  Like all his later books, there is something warm in reading his books.  They celebrate positive queer representation in the characters.  In addition, the characters were well developed and the world building was terrific.  It’s almost like he did research on real werewolves to produce the mythos here.

The plot is rather complex.  Ox’s father left when he was young.  He reinforced that Ox was slow and that people would shit on him his whole life.  When his mother came close to losing the house, he got a job at the auto repair shop that his father worked at.  The owner there helped him and his mom out.  When Ox was sixteen, he met a ten-year-old boy who immediately attached to him.  Turned out he was the son of a pack of werewolves.  He is the alpha heir, training with his dad to take over when the day comes.  Joe, the boy, draws Ox into the family.  Soon Ox and his mom become part of the pack even though they are still humans.  Back story on Joe:  he was kidnapped and tortured by an evil werewolf.  Joe’s father imprisoned him magically, but now, years later, the evil one escapes and is searching for Joe and his family.  

Ox is an awesome character.  He starts out the slow-witted, quiet boy that his father reinforced in him.  But once he meets Joe and joins the pack, he begins to grow, gaining confidence, albeit slowly.  Ox is the narrator of the story as well, so we have an in depth look at the inner development that happens.  

The others in the pack are also terrific.  I was surprised at how much personality Klune was able to inject in each of them.  We know Joe the most, of course, as his relationship with Ox is intense.  As they grow up, they become very attached.  When Joe is seventeen, Ox realizes they are attracted to each other at an incredibly deep level, but only now figures out it is sexual as well.  He also discovers that Joe has chosen Ox to be his mate, an unprecedented thing as Ox is still human.  In addition, Ox is terrified of his feelings because Joe is not yet eighteen and there is a six-year age difference between them.  This may give some readers some pause, but the relationship is handled very well.  Nothing happens for three years, during which time half the pack, led by Joe, leaves to search for the bad werewolf and his gang.  

The one issue I had with the book was that I thought the emotional suffering that Ox goes through when Joe and part of the family leaves went on for way too long and way too intensely.  It was often hard to read Ox torturing himself inside over the events surrounding Joe’s leaving.  The book is just over five hundred pages and it seemed like the whole last third of the book was anguish Ox felt over Joe’s absence.  However, it does illustrate the bond of the wolf pack and the connect between Ox and Joe, as well as with other members of the pack.  And of course, I’m leaving out a lot of spoilers that explain why the feelings are so intense.  I just felt it went on too long.  

There are so many other characters that were really well drawn, including Joe’s parents, his brothers, Ox’s mom, the owner of the auto shop and the small group of mechanics, and the girl Ox dates briefly before he realizes the true nature of his relationship with Joe.  Even the bad wolf and his associates were multi-dimensional.  Klune somehow breathes life and personality into all his character creations.  

I give this book four stars out of five.  I knocked it down one star because I grew tired of being inside Ox’s anger and anguish.  Otherwise, I just loved this book.  I’m so excited to read the remaining three books in the series, which I’ll be doing in between my book club selections.