A review by taylorreadsbooks
Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin
5.0
Imagine if you will, what life might have been like if Germany didn’t lose WWII. If Japan succeeded in winning Pearl Harbor and the East. If the concentration camps and labor camps and attempts at perfecting and extending the Aryan Race were not stopped.
Ryan Graudin has written a chilling and mesmerizing tale surrounding the two biggest “what ifs” to WWII. What if Hitler and the Third Reich won. What if the experiments on the members of the concentration camps actually worked.
Wolf by Wolf caught me and pulled me into this alternate path of history before the end of the first chapter. I was hooked. Still am. I can’t stop thinking about it.
I grew up reading all kinds of historical fiction surrounding WWII and I’ve never read anything like this. The year is 1956 and the Axis powers of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan rule the world. Every year to commemorate their great victory Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host an annual motorcycle race across their conjoined continents call the Axis Tour. The victor of this tour is awarded and audience with the now highly reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victors Ball. This being a big deal because the Führer no longer makes public appearances. This would be the perfect chance, the only chance really, for an assassination attempt. Enter Yael. Yael, a jewish girl who escaped from a death camp and into the resistance, intends to win the race and kill Hitler. While in the death camp Yael had many painful experiments done on her by doctors trying to perfect the Aryan race. These experiments gave Yael the power to skinshift, to take on the appearance of another or bits and pieces of many to become one person. This is how she plans on entering the race and completing her mission, by impersonating last year’s only female victor, Adele Wolfe. Becoming Adele is one thing, but tricking Adele’s twin brother Felix who knows every little detail of her outside of Yael’s understanding as well as Luka Löw, a former Victor who may have had more then just an alliance with Adele the previous year will be harder then she anticipated.
Yael was an interesting character and my heart broke for her. At 16 years old, after years of impersonating others to keep off the Gestapo’s radar, she doesn’t even remember what she really looks like. She has memorized so much information on Adele Wolfe and her Axis Tour that sometimes she isn’t sure if the choices she is making are her own or what the real Adele would have done. She had 5 wolves tattooed over the death camp numbers on her left arm, 4 deaths and one memory. The smoke that haunts her nightmares. You get her backstory in spurts though out the book giving you a deeper understanding of just how much Yael has lost and how important it is, for her personally, to succeed in her mission.
I really loved the secondary characters too, Felix Wolfe, Adele’s twin brother, enter’s the race last minute surprising Yael who then has to then scrabble from more in-depth information on Felix to keep up her Adele-ness. He is everything you could want from a brother. All he wants to do is protect his sister and bring her home. Luka Löw is the 1954 Axis Tour Victor. He also has a history with the real Adele, one that is not in the papers or anywhere in the files that Yael has meticulously studied. I love how she describes herself, the “cobweb version of Adele Wolfe” to many holes that both of these boys can see right through if given the chance. The development of Luka throughout this book intrigued me, there seems to be so much more to him. And there totally is as I discovered when I devoured Iron by Iron, a novella from Luka’s POV from the 1955 Axis tour. Oh Luka. This whole situation is giving me a strong Warner vibe from Shatter Me and I am loving it. I can’t can’t CAN’T wait until Blood for Blood comes out November 1st.
Ryan Graudin has written a chilling and mesmerizing tale surrounding the two biggest “what ifs” to WWII. What if Hitler and the Third Reich won. What if the experiments on the members of the concentration camps actually worked.
Wolf by Wolf caught me and pulled me into this alternate path of history before the end of the first chapter. I was hooked. Still am. I can’t stop thinking about it.
I grew up reading all kinds of historical fiction surrounding WWII and I’ve never read anything like this. The year is 1956 and the Axis powers of the Third Reich and Imperial Japan rule the world. Every year to commemorate their great victory Hitler and Emperor Hirohito host an annual motorcycle race across their conjoined continents call the Axis Tour. The victor of this tour is awarded and audience with the now highly reclusive Adolf Hitler at the Victors Ball. This being a big deal because the Führer no longer makes public appearances. This would be the perfect chance, the only chance really, for an assassination attempt. Enter Yael. Yael, a jewish girl who escaped from a death camp and into the resistance, intends to win the race and kill Hitler. While in the death camp Yael had many painful experiments done on her by doctors trying to perfect the Aryan race. These experiments gave Yael the power to skinshift, to take on the appearance of another or bits and pieces of many to become one person. This is how she plans on entering the race and completing her mission, by impersonating last year’s only female victor, Adele Wolfe. Becoming Adele is one thing, but tricking Adele’s twin brother Felix who knows every little detail of her outside of Yael’s understanding as well as Luka Löw, a former Victor who may have had more then just an alliance with Adele the previous year will be harder then she anticipated.
Yael was an interesting character and my heart broke for her. At 16 years old, after years of impersonating others to keep off the Gestapo’s radar, she doesn’t even remember what she really looks like. She has memorized so much information on Adele Wolfe and her Axis Tour that sometimes she isn’t sure if the choices she is making are her own or what the real Adele would have done. She had 5 wolves tattooed over the death camp numbers on her left arm, 4 deaths and one memory. The smoke that haunts her nightmares. You get her backstory in spurts though out the book giving you a deeper understanding of just how much Yael has lost and how important it is, for her personally, to succeed in her mission.
I really loved the secondary characters too, Felix Wolfe, Adele’s twin brother, enter’s the race last minute surprising Yael who then has to then scrabble from more in-depth information on Felix to keep up her Adele-ness. He is everything you could want from a brother. All he wants to do is protect his sister and bring her home. Luka Löw is the 1954 Axis Tour Victor. He also has a history with the real Adele, one that is not in the papers or anywhere in the files that Yael has meticulously studied. I love how she describes herself, the “cobweb version of Adele Wolfe” to many holes that both of these boys can see right through if given the chance. The development of Luka throughout this book intrigued me, there seems to be so much more to him. And there totally is as I discovered when I devoured Iron by Iron, a novella from Luka’s POV from the 1955 Axis tour. Oh Luka. This whole situation is giving me a strong Warner vibe from Shatter Me and I am loving it. I can’t can’t CAN’T wait until Blood for Blood comes out November 1st.