Waer
Meg Caddy
While on a training trip with his little brother, Lowell finds a waer washed up on a riverbank, mostly dead, mostly mute. As Lowell tries to nurse her back to health, other forces are moving that she knows about, but Lowell’s little town doesn’t. Little do they know that there will be even bigger things at stake.
I didn’t feel a distinction between the perspectives of Lowell and Lycaea. This is a common complaint of mine. Also, for a couple of chapters I didn’t realise that Lowell was a boy. Honestly, I thought it could have gone either way. Lowell isn’t depicted as a fighter, and Lycaea certainly breaks any stereotypes of a passive woman. Kick-ass!
Mm, don’t mind if there is a plot twist. Or two. Or just any plot twist that Caddy wants to throw at me. She gave me enough clues, but I was too entranced by the storytelling to really get a handle on what could be happening. Lowell was more switched on than I was, and I’m supposed to be the all-seeing reader!
What I enjoyed was that being a Waer (a human able to change into a wolf) was really a minor plot point. The characters themselves provided the momentum and the motivation to keep reading the novel, no relying on tropes. Apart from a spirit-bond, which happens in other races, they just have that extra little bit of awesome.
The ending felt a little rushed, but what made me happy was that it was a complete ending. So note to everyone – this is a stand alone, and it’s brilliant as one. Don’t expect a series. But at the same time, I can totally see a series happening from this, and I wouldn’t be objecting so long as that each novel is a true stand alone. I can see a distant novel either in the past, or the future.
I had my eyes on this novel ever since I saw it at a publisher event last year. I tweeted like mad and put my name in for it as soon as possible. I think maybe that built it up in my mind as a phantom of ‘amazing’, and then when I read it I felt like it wasn’t worth 5 stars, and that made me sad. It’s really hard to get 5 stars from me anyway. A well-deserved 4 stars, and I’ll be keeping my eye out for more novels by Caddy.
I put off reading this novel because it sounded like yet another ‘Spiritual Quest’ novel that wanted to tell me how to live my life. Instead I found a fiction that was just how the blurb announced it. The only problem was that the blurb read more as an advertising brief than a quick summary of the text.
Oh man, oh man. Where do I get started with this? The jazz and soul music promised to me by the author, or the attractive cover? Or both? I found myself hooked in, with the music and lyrics speaking to me and tying in nicely with the delicious cover. I didn’t feel ashamed of taking it out in public, and in fact read it instead of doing house renovations!
I’m pretty sure rescuing her mother from alcoholism in this method would be illegal… And I’m not sure how it would work. But in the context of the novel? Hell yeah! Bossing! Good work Kirra. For a stressed and ‘weak’ person such as Kirra, she has a real spine when she needs to. She just needs to be reminded that if you’re at the bottom, the only way is up.
This was impressive because Petraitis had obviously done her work well (as she has in her other books, which I now want to get my hands on), and she places the emphasis on the human touch. Humans are fallible, and criminal ones even more so. The book also highlighted the impact on police officers’ family lives in the days after a crime.
So you’ve seen the movie six dozen times (or maybe seven dozen, if you’re my age and it played on the weekend TV every week). But the book is the best, and the two movies don’t do justice to Roald Dahl’s world. Something that this novel has over the films is that you get to see illustrations of the four other children after they have been returned to their approximate original selves.
At the end of the first novel, there is a hint about what will happen in this one. I didn’t get the hint, even with this novel sitting on my shelf. This time we see the evolution of the 
I’m going to be honest here, the first couple of chapters were so slow that I considered putting it back on the shelf for another time. But I kept persevering, and I was rewarded with emotional torrents that could pluck heartstrings while also giving a harsh relativity to the main characters.
This innovative magic system – I could have had more! The basis was spheres – burn a Ruby Red one, have straight teeth, or Aqua ones so that you can sleep whenever you need. The price point is all you need to worry about to do. In the manner of Brandon Sanderson, I wished there had been an index at the end of the novel to remind me what each of the spheres burned did to each person. Then I could have flipped back and forth as I wanted.
I’m not really sure how I feel about this novel. I didn’t really get into the psyche of the characters. I couldn’t keep the boys straight at all to start off with, and although I liked Blue, I just didn’t get along with her. I couldn’t feel anything with her – no fear, no nothing. If anything, they were all too cool. Even when they were in danger, they hardly seemed to care. I didn’t care if they were going to die or not, which isn’t a good sign.