Praise
Nice! A horror novel written with real love for the genre, wearing its influences on its sleeve, and offering a blast of a story! "The Wolf's Time" gives Stranger Things vibes unabashedly, but soon becomes its own thing, choosing to take things into a novel direction. It's a summer tale, about young friends in a Swedish small town (Skutskär), whose holidays turn into terror, as they're forced to fight for their lives! The body-count increases very fast, and the twists are totally unexpected! Admittedly, the language is a bit rough (considering Östlund's Swedish), the pacing has a few problems (especially the second part), but the author knows how to tell a story worth the readers' investment (the novel exceeds 600 pages!), not only promising a terrific tale but actually delivering a mature, terrifying narrative full also of insight on friendship and life in general. The characterization is unreal: it's like wathing a slasher, though one that allows you time and space to root for the characters! I had some reservations with the ending (too obscure for me), but in no way is this going to stop me from recommending the book to every horror lover out there!
Wow.
Slow world building, fully immersive, highly atmospheric, unforgettable, coming of age sci-fi/horror/thriller. A hidden gem of sci-fic masterpiece.
If you enjoy living in the book while you read, this is an absolute must. Felt like I was walking these streets along with them and sharing their anxiety of the unknown. If there's such a thing as a fever dream, this is a fever nightmare for those involved.
Quick Synopsis out of Goodreads:
“As the sun sets and darkness creeps in, the once familiar surroundings of their hometown become a battleground. The friends' summer plans of LAN parties, mopeds and youthful rebellion are shattered by an unknown enemy that descends upon them with merciless ferocity. Forced to confront their deepest fears and darkest nightmares, they must band together to survive a foe unlike anything anyone has ever seen.”
You can tell this book is a labor of love, so much time, research, and detail were poured into these pages. A whopping 641 pages, it's a rabbit hole filled with time lore, video game references, pop culture and characters with their own mini worlds built in, and mopeds, so many mopeds. It was fun, frustrating, nostalgic, and mysterious. A true saga.
It took me months to finish this book. At first it was very slow world setting, personally I enjoy world building, slow burn but I could see how some people would think it's too much or too slow, it can be intimidating but it was perfection for me. As this helps me immerse myself into the book and become another character in the tale. This felt it was written with us nerds in mind. It felt nostalgic to everything I love and hold dear. I didn't want it to end.
If you enjoy Stranger Things, Battle Royale, and any of the Cloverfield movies, this book right here will scratch that itch.
I would like to thank NetGalley and Oskar Östlund for the opportunity to read this e-book masterpiece.
It's a somber, evocative novel that talks about Erik and his friends in the haunting Swedish town of Skutskär, where coming of age seems intertwined with the shadows of something mysterious and threatening. Oskar Östlund invites us into a world so real yet surreal at once-a combination of folklore and myth in raw teenage life.
In The Wolf's Time, we follow Erik and his closely-knit circle of friends as they move through what will prove to be a crucial summer. We are indeed being placed in the small industrial town of Skutskär in Sweden, following them through every trial of being a teenager and bonding over an uncomfortable supernatural presence that has put them in its scope. The community, the ancient forests, and even Erik's personal demons will play as compelling backdrops against this twisted Norse-inspired saga. Events and myths and legends of the old Norse gods are interwoven into one line of growing dread. Their lives are made to struggle through not just typical adolescent adversities but even sinister portents that something darker, more primeval is stirring around them.
Erik is our protagonist-a quiet, introspective mind repeatedly pressed to the limit. Tormented by memories, longing constitutes the fragility and complexity of youth. The psychology of Erik is subtly detailed: much feeling, little saying. Interactions with friends and girlfriends denote a young man caught somewhere between the innocence of a boy and a maturing self-awareness. His relationship with Sandra, this older girl who fascinates and terrorizes him, is poignantly exposed in order to bring out first love, self-doubt, and imbalances of power.
By contrast, Sandra is a mix of magnetism and mystery; thus, the attraction becomes thrillingly dangerous for Erik. Fierce yet brittle, her personality walks a taut high wire, and the way she interrelates with Erik suggests an important but troubled role in his growth. This duality, deep-caring yet emotionally elusive, made her a strong influence upon Erik, propelling him toward self-discovery and against the fears within himself.
The supporting characters are Erik's friends, such as Oscar and Johan, who form part of the indispensable support within the world he lives. Each one of them brings another aspect in thematic development in the story. He writes, "One thinks of fierce loyalty to one another, the shared history, the quirks of each-Johan's charisma and lightness, Oscar's acute sensitivity-in order to show with fleeting beauty the bitter sweetness of young friendships." This is a shared journey through this summer and into the emotional currents that will be traveled by them-a time in one's life that speaks to something about bonds that define and shape us.
Throughout the course of the novel, The Wolf's Time, friendship would more be of a foreground disposition rather than a background condition as far as the life of Erik is concerned. The ties of friendship that exist between Erik and his set of friends tie them together in some give-and-take of strengths and individual insecurities.
Against the comparative untamed beauty of the forest, the industrial shadows threatening Skutskär provide a potent almost elemental sense of place. The tension between human progress and the primal force that is the natural world gets reinforced.
Influenced by Norse mythology, the novel plunges deep into fate, death, and transformation. With the mounting presence of the wolves, Erik's journey interlinks with snippets of mythology insinuating that some forces are closer than we may actually think.
In the passage of Erik from childhood into the unsure cruelty of young manhood, weighted down by his emotional confusedness, lie openness to young love, painful shifts in identity, and yearning for acceptance. Delicately, Östlund handles these themes without ever once making readers feel anything but deep empathy for the struggles and joys of his characters.
Östlund's language is ornate, Disturbingly beautiful; it maintains the mythic origins of this story. One feels his prose to be lush and atmospheric: the forests around Skutskär, smoky townscapes, the almost tangible presence of the Baltic Sea, imagined with a great deal of vividness. The use of figures of speech-especially metaphor-adds further dimensions to the reading experience, giving Erik's world a quality of magical realism bordering on the mythological. This novel has a deliberate pacing since it often meanders from some contemplative moments into an outburst of action, truly reflective of Erik's turbulent emotions and growing fear.
Östlund often takes advantage of a third-person limited point of view, one firmly fixed upon Erik; he whisks the reader down deep into Erik's inner being in such a way that instant empathy is created. Even the most innocuous scenes through his eyes beat with tension and emotion, feeding into the overarching tension of the tale with which we become abruptly submerged in his psychological journey.
The Wolf's Time is a haunting journey into the darkness that lurks in myth and in the heart. Östlund interlaces a coming-of-age story with rich layers of folklore, youth, and existential unease. Character complexities, world building, and the blend of horror and myth are strong points in the book. Sometimes, though, it is really slow.
Such pacing indeed fits the atmospheric tension following with every page. Intimate and epic, this coming-of-age horror, The Wolf's Time, claws into real questions about one's human nature, nature around them, and the overall fate that is in store. I would say, without disparaging other work in the realms of mythic horror, that The Wolf's Time is a virtual cousin to such novels as John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In, in which quotidian settings suddenly crash with supernatural elements in manners both disturbing and revelatory.
Overall Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5)
Writing Style: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5) – Evocative and richly textured.
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ (4/5) – Compelling, though Sandra’s character could benefit from further exploration.
World-Building: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5) – The setting is meticulously crafted and atmospheric.
Fans of dark, atmospheric fiction with elements taken from both mythology and transitions in life will be the ones most pleased with this book. Where does one even start with Scandinavian horror and mythological fiction.