In her debut book, Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves: A Novel, Meg Long creates a captivating story full of internal and external conflict for her main character, Sena. In a world where survival and competition are the focus, and discrimination taints most human connections, it is hard for Sena to find her way after the loss of her parents. She tries to find a way out of the world in which she feels alone and trapped. After being forced to forge a connection with an injured wolf, Sena finds that her search for escape leads her down another path entirely. I appreciated the world-building in this story, as an icy tundra populated with fierce animals engaged in an all-out struggle for survival forms a fitting backdrop for a capitalistic human race defined by competition for both resources and survival. I also liked the animal component as Sena and the wolf, Iska, gradually grow a bond. While many animal characters in adult literature appear in the backdrop as pets without playing a major role in the storyline, Iska is a complete character, possibly just as important as Sena herself. Long’s use of an animal as another fleshed-out protagonist makes the story more compelling. Even though this is a survival adventure story set in a dystopian future, it reads less as a sci-fi novel and more as a realistic story with chilling parallels to today’s world that make it more relatable. As both a survival and coming-of-age story, overall, this was a great book; however, sometimes the plot went too fast and elided certain details that could have added depth to the narrative.
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