A Wolf Before the Storm
J.W. Golan
YA Fantasy
In an age of magic, in a realm where werewolves stalk the land, a lost girl awakens from a nightmare – and claims a legend as her own.
An indentured servant to a den-master of thieves, Callisto has lived by her wits and talents – a lone wolf girl in an empire pledged to extinguish her race. Trained as a lockpick and pickpocket, adept with a dagger, fate has never been her friend.
All of this changes when a chance burglary hints at a hidden cache of letters – letters left behind by an Arche-Mage centuries before. Secreted somewhere in the Imperial Library, the documents promise to fetch a fortune from the right buyer. It could be everything she dreamed of. Enough to pay off her debts. Enough to start a new life. Or it could just as easily land her in the dungeons of an empire vowed to her destruction.
Amidst fleeting glimpses of a life she longs for but can never have, Callisto must maintain her cover long enough to find the treasured documents – before the shadows of her past overtake her.
Uncaged Review: Callisto is a wolf living as a human thief and street rag. The master of this group of thieves is a horrid man named Pontus. When Pontus gets a message from a colleague about a huge score, he takes his best lockpick, Callisto with. This is a job that could take weeks, researching in an Imperial library to find documents that could be worth a small fortune. As she goes undercover as a researcher, she is befriended by a young man named Phaeton. But Callisto can’t get close to anyone, being a wolf could mean instant death. During the time as a lockpick and thief, Callisto has trained under a master teaching her to fight, with and without weapons.
There is plenty of action and the book keeps a steady pace throughout. Parts were a bit drawn out and editing could have been tighter, but overall this is a good YA fantasy read and since these books are in a timeline after the series called The Stormfall Chronicles, I think I would have had a better handle on how this world began if I read them first. To understand this series, you don’t have to read the first group, but it lays a nice foundation if you do. Reviewed by Cyrene
4 Stars
