A Reluctant Hero
If you’re looking for a book that acknowledges common tropes in fantasy and then sets them subtly on their head, Yorath the Wolf is worth a read. Spiriting away the child of a royal household to save their life, a gifted young man who wants to become a warrior, and a romantic retirement in the mountains are all touched upon in this novel. They’re at once familiar and just different enough in the context of Yorath’s life to be interesting. I was specifically interested in the character arc in which Cherry Wilder explores Yorath’s reluctance to participate in war and fighting in spite of his obvious strength and prowess.
Yorath is born with a twisted shoulder, a line of hair down his spine, and a tail. This marks him for dead in the eyes of his father the prince and his grandfather, the Great King. A prophecy foretold the Great King’s death at the hands of a malformed child of his own blood, and so he orders all born with birth defects of any kind to be killed. To be honest, if I had demon children being born into my family, I don’t know what I’d do. Killing them all seems to be the common choice most morally ambiguous rulers make, but I’m sure there’s another option.
With a sort of middle finger salute to the hand fate has dealt him, Yorath is spirited away by Hagnild, one of the Great King’s healers, to live secretly in the woods. Predictably, Hagnild is able to help Yorath’s shoulder grow straight so that it all but disappears from the story, never hindering him in any meaningful way. I was willing to let that slide when I realized that, although Yorath shows interest in the soldiers he and his childhood playmate stumble across that is typical of young boys, he remains a kind, if painfully naïve boy. To be fair, though, I couldn’t realistically expect a boy who’s spent his whole life in a forest to be very worldly.
His kindness is what threw me off. I was expecting the wild, innocent violence of the young boys I know. Instead, though his huge size makes him a hard hitter when outlaws come to the woods, he’s more of a gentle, bumbling giant who just happens to be good at combat.
Although he does become more aware of the world when tragic events abruptly end his childhood and turns into a peerless warrior and strategist, he still maintains that gentleness. Even as he recognizes the necessity for war and violence in a world in which that’s the only way to defend yourself against greedy warlords, Yorath begins to resent it. It is this resentment throughout the story that keeps me engaged with Yorath’s character as he develops. Loyalty to his superiors and a desire to avenge the death of his first patron are the only things that keep him on the battlefield. When confronted by a group of assassins, he even goes so far as to throw his weapon away after recognizing the man leading the assassins as the brother of a man he kills early on in the novel.
I found it contradictory that someone who professes to hate fighting continues to use violence to solve his and the realm’s problems, but was pleasantly satisfied when **SPOILER ALERT** he leaves the battlefield at the end of the novel and travels into the wilderness. My perception of the ending of the novel may be biased, because I find the idea of living in the wilderness highly romantic, but I would argue that this ending fits well with the desires that Yorath has expressed throughout the novel. Retiring to live with a wolf as a companion in a secret valley in the mountains feels right to me as a reader. I also felt that he deserved the happiness he gains when he is reunited with the woman he loves, and the son he didn’t know he had.
Ultimately, Yorath the Wolf was a pleasant change from the “warrior” character arc that I have become familiar with. I especially appreciated the fact that Yorath didn’t stop to help piece back together the war torn world at the end of the novel. He trusts that his allies have things well in hand and leaves for the mountains to satisfy a lifelong yearning for seclusion and peace. His choices, especially at the end of the novel, felt real. I related to them on a deeply human level, no matter that he is a seven-foot tall giant of a man. Cherry Wilder does a great job of making him into a character that many readers will be able to identify with.
