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As ever, here you will find spoilers from previous books in the series, but no spoilers for this book.

Book two in the Green Creek series is as devastatingly wonderful as the first. I did miss the audio format, which I’ll be returning to for book three (as soon as it’s available – hurry!).

This is Gordo Livingstone’s story. We know Gordo well from Wolfsong, but only from Ox’s perspective and in Ox’s lifetime; here, Gordo’s own childhood and upbringing with the Bennett pack alternates with a later timeline, starting with the time that Gordo spent on the road with Joe, Carter and Kelly, and beyond the events of book one. Somewhere I saw the four books in this series as being about four relationships; if book one was Ox’s story and centered his relationship with Joe, book two is Gordo’s story and focuses on his relationship with Mark. (No spoiler there: we knew they had something and now we know a whole lot more.) I will also say that there is a developing theme about the legacy of fathers. Ox and Gordo both had fathers who hurt them, and whose words continue to be present for the sons long after they’re gone. Their mothers remain present, too – Gordo’s mother left her son some difficulties, while Ox’s was all goodness – but the fathers-to-sons legacy feels like a greater throughline, especially with the male Bennett alphas taking surrogate places for each man. (Alphas can be female in this world, but the Bennetts, so far, have male ones.)

In some ways this is a continuation in kind. The Bennett pack is terribly powerful; they are a very loving and devoted family but also can be a demanding one; this level of commitment can be painful and costly, but the pack does its best to care for its own even when the process hurts. There is more, as one character termed it, mystical moon magic (romance, love, and definitely sex – not plentiful, but gorgeously written when we do get it). There is violence and war. Other wolves, bad witches, human hunters. There is a new threat in this book. It will take everything they have to stay whole, individually and together. There is love and lust and there is such angst, and for my money, Klune writes all of these (and the sex!) as well as anybody does. I’m stoked about book three, Heartsong.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: family, fantasy, LGBTQ, romance |