Book Log 12/2016 - Adrian Tchaikovsky: The Tiger and the Wolf - Echoes of the fall #1

Maniye has been brought up in the Wolf tribe, disenfranchised because although she is the daughter of the chief, her mother was of the Tiger tribe, captured, raped and then killed after Maniye's birth. She's small, counts for little and largely goes her own way when she can keep away from the cruel priest and her father's fists. But Maniye harbours a dangerous secret. She carries two souls, one a wolf and the other a tiger.

All humans are shapechangers, whether wolves, tigers, boars, bear or crocodile. There are non-shapechanger versions of all these creatures, but no non-shapechanging humans - or none that we see. Maniye is both tiger and wolf, though she has to keep the tiger well hidden

When Maniye's father reveals his plans for her, she's horrified. He wants to send her to the tiger clan to claim her birthright as daughter of the queen. He believes maniye can step into the role of leader by blood heritage and then betray the tiger so that the wolves can defeat their old enemy once and for all.

Dad is clearly bonkers, so Maniye takes off into the heart of a northern winter, surviving by good luck and help from unexpected sources. She spends most of this book running away from the destiny her father and the priest had planned but discovers that the two souls warring within her have to be reconciled otherwise she's not going to survive.

Tchaikovsky rattles through Maniye's adventures at a furious and exhausting pace. The book is brutal and visceral, though Maniye, herself, avoids repeating the cruelty that she's been brought up with. This is a monstrous feat of worldbuilding and imagination encompassing anthropology, religion and spiritualism with a wide (and largely frozen) landscape. There are some gruesome bits that might make you wince and some heart-stopping fight scenes in which the protagonists step between their human and animal forms in the blink of an eye.

It's the first in a new series, so although it reaches a satisfying conclusion it's obviously only an interim point in a much longer story. As an added bonus this has one of the best covers I've seen in a long time.