The Red Wolf Conspiracy

This was a super first novel, up in my top 5 favorites for the year so far. I love discovering new authors, especially since one or two of my favorites have not been delivering the goods lately (George RR Martin-write the book already and stop messing around and taunting your readers! Robin Hobb, write something else, preferably set in the Six Duchies!) Anyway, Robert V.S. Redick has satisfied my hunger for a fantasy world to match that of Martin's or Hobb's and it's populated with wonderful characters, not all of them human. Most of the novel was set on a ship, and I love a good seafaring tale. The plot is original, well-crafted, and the author didn't feel like he needed 150 pages of expository to set up the story. I got into it right show more away and lost sleep because I couldn't put it down. Can't wait for the sequel! show less

There’s nothing new in The Red Wolf Conspiracy: you’ve seen characters like this before, you’ve seen a plot like this before, and you’ve definitely read pirate books like this before. But what you haven’t read, and what you rarely encounter, are other worlds that are created as masterfully, characters that warm your heart, and compel you to cheer and shed tears at various points in the novel. You haven’t read a book like this, and lucky for you, there’s more where it came from.

The characters are archetypal in every sense – the outcast hero, his faithful best friend, a stubborn, fiery heroine. These are our three young protagonists, thrown together on a voyage of the last Great Ship, Imperial Merchant Ship Chathrand, into show more enemy treaty to precipitate peace between two oft-warring nations. The price: the marriage of our heroine to a foreign prince. Surrounding them are giants, tiny people, assassins, doctors, merchants and mages, each with their own agendas, motivations and ambitions, but largely stereotypical in their scope. The down-side is that one is rarely surprised while reading this 500+ novel: no betrayal is shocking, no revelation is too evil, and everyone sticks to their pre-determined roles with ease. But that’s not to say the book isn’t enjoyable – in fact, it’s predictability means you have to pay extra attention to the characters, what they see and do and touch, because it all plays a part in the greater narrative.

The plot of The Red Wolf Conspiracy is engaging and thrilling – who doesn’t love a ripping good yarn set primarily on a ship? In fact, the grandest ship still in existence. There are thrills and spills, and with Pazel Pathkindle, the magic-cursed deck hand, in tow, if something can go wrong, it will go wrong, which is hilarious as well as exciting. I thought the ship and its surrounding easy to imagine, especially the docksides and wharves, and various areas of the ship itself. The author has brought his world to life admirably, each race he describes has a rich history, social structure and religious background. Although the people of the Mzithrin Empire remain largely unknown, the other cultures in the book, all conquered at some point by Arqual, are fleshed out and dimensional.

The one detrimental element of the book is the author’s inexplicable decision to sometimes include the most tedious details of his character’s lives, and sometimes exclude their most dangerous adventures, only informing readers of them through mundane conversations. While at first it wasn’t so bad, it became jarring and disappointing when it became a common place. The book, being quite long, probably benefits from this in terms of its length, but I think my reading experience definitely suffered.

A wonderful sea-faring adventure, The Red Wolf Conspiracy combines the usual elements of epic fantasy into fun, exciting read. It’s a book that will be enjoyed by fans of Scott Lynch and the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and I’m glad that Del Ray gave me the whole series to read, because I don’t think I can stay away!

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher for review.
You can read more of my reviews at Speculating on SpecFic. show less

The Red Wolf Conspiracy
Robert V. S. Redick
Historical Fiction
Del Rey (2009), Hardcover
464 pages
Advance Readers Copy

The first moment I opened this book I could smell the salty sea spray and feel the snap of the heavy canvas sails in the wind. I could hear the creak of ageless magical timber and twisted hemp and the sound of a thousand activities as sailors scurried the deck of the Chathrand as it plied The Quiet Sea. Not since Raymond Feist’s “The King’s Buccaneer” or C. S. Forester’s “Hornblower” books have I had such fun on the high seas.

I truly enjoyed “The Red Wolf Conspiracy” and was pleasantly surprised and impressed by such a highly imaginative debut novel. I’m looking forward to all his future works. This is an show more historical seafaring romp with a magical/fantastical twist entwined with political intrigue which kept me turning pages at a furious rate. This is an enjoyable read with intelligently crafted characters, locations and scenes and was undeniably captivating. Best of all, there wasn’t a single misplaced or wasted word. I ask you to recall the first time you read “Lord Valentine’s Castle” or any of the “Pern” stories and you’ll begin to understand how wonderfully immersed in the fantasy I became while reading this tale.

My favorite characters were the tiny Ixhxchr which appear to be loosely based on Ireland’s “Little Folk” and Captain Nilus Rose, the stalwart skipper of the greatest ship to ever sail.

I can’t think of a single negative thing to say about this book. And, after an hour of thought I still can’t seem to find the right words to praise it highly enough.

5 of 5 stars

The Alternative
Southeastern Wisconsin show less

Mr. Redick's debut novel, The Red Wolf Conspiracy, takes place in a fantasy world in which the main mode of travel is by sailing ship, which leads to adventure on the high seas for the story's main characters. This story begins shortly after a terrible war, when a six-hundred-year-old ship sets sail for enemy lands in order to create an enduring peace between the world's two greatest monarchies. When the characters uncover a dark conspiracy surrounding the Red Wolf, a legendary and dangerous artifact, they must face a host of dangerous foe and fight for their very lives while uncovering secrets that could destroy both empires.

While the first half of this novel is fast-paced and well written, I found the middle to be slow and cumbersome, show more not nearly as well-fashioned as the first part. The ending, though satisfactory and set to merge well with the sequel, failed to make up for the humps, bumps and downright clumsy feel of the middle part of the book, where some elements seemed ill-timed or out of place. The concept is marvelous, very intriguing, but the middle of the story could benefit from some editing and possibly from another draft to smooth out some of the inconsistencies.

Over all, not bad for a first novel. I eagerly await the next installment of the series and hope to see some improvement in the flow of the storyline. Recommended to adult fantasy and sea-faring fans who don't mind the violence, which may be disturbing to some readers.

This review was previously published on Dragonviews show less

The Red Wolf Conspiracy was the most enjoyable fantasy novel I've read for a few years. Redick's comfort with the building blocks of novel construction bely the books debut status, and it has me tearing through the sequels at a rate of knots.

Pazel is a refugee ship's boy with an unusual talent for acquiring languages. Through happenstance he finds himself on the last, greatest ship in the Empire - capable of carrying over a thousand people. But crushed amongst the sailors and tourists, there are agents for and against the powerful Arquali empire, and Pazel will find himself in grave danger before he's even left port.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy is both original, but also unashamedly old-school in its construction. Old school in the sense show more that it lacks a gimmick, or thinly disguised metaphor underneath its swashbuckling yarn. Equally, it lacks a kind of "gritty" masculine braggadocio that other writers like Steven Erikson takes to adolescent extremes. Perhaps this explains its lack of critical "oomph" on publication - though I note every reviewer that has read the book seems to like it.

What Red Wolf Conspiracy does have, though, is something much better. A fully fleshed-out world with a concrete sense of place and time. Wonderfully three-dimensional characters with believable, complex motivations, and the crucial fines herbes of a good fantasy novel (in my opinion): A strong narrative; a ripe sense of possibility and magic; and an undercurrent of romance or passion.

The two main protagonists, though young, are mature and suitably complex. Their backgrounds shape their reactions and emotions, but they also grow and change over the books. The same can be said of all the characters, really - The boat could become a metaphor for a voyage of personal discovery; a journey into the unknown where the traveller is changed long before the destination is reach, if there is one.

Indeed, under Redick's deceptively smooth prose, there's a philosphical bent to the book. It's not heavy-handed, and never overpowers a quite relentless narrative, but there's something allusive to it. Some reviews have mentioned the teenage protagonists as an attempt to gain cross-over appeal, but I vehemently disagree.

This is a book centred around discovery - for its characters, its races, and its nations. What age is better suited to a voyage of self discovery than adolescence? In this respect, despite the powerhouse plot, The Red Wolf Conspiracy put me in mind of Paul Park's Roumania quartet, one of my best reads of 2012. This series is certainly shaping up in the same vein, most recommended. show less

I picked up The Red Wolf Conspiracy because it has a picture of a full-rigged ship on the cover. As a passionate, but certainly not exclusive, reader of age-of-fighting-sail historic naval fiction, I am intrigued by the possibility of successful HNF/SF hybrids. There are some quite good cross-overs between HNF and mystery fiction, as well as espionage and even romance, but I'm still looking for the perfect mix of HNF with the genre I read avidly in my long-ago youth, Science Fiction. Taylor Anderson has produced an excellent SF/Naval Fiction series, but it is based on WWII destroyers – fun, but not my cup of sunshine. Tom Grundner did a creditable hybrid with the first book of his Sir Sydney Smith series, but then wrote out the SF show more elements when he republished. (I haven’t read Naomi Novik yet, but I have high hopes there. So little time…) The action of TRWC does take place on a sailing ship but, despite the occasional “stunsails aloft,” it is not really naval fiction. It is, however, a damn fine novel and I was forced to put my quirky expectations aside and enjoy it on its own merits.

The Chathrand is by far the largest ship in the world, the last survivor of a distant era, and she is being prepared for a mysterious voyage. She carries not only a variety of nationalities and classes, but a mixture of sentient species. The action centers around two young people, Pazel Pathkendle, a tarboy (the lowest of the ship's crew) and Thasha Isiq, the daughter of the ship's most exalted passenger. Everyone aboard has secrets and few people are what they seem.

Secrets are revealed as the characters pursue their competing ambitions and the reader is forced to confront questions about the nature of good and evil, loyalty and betrayal, life and death.

The world of Alifros is richly drawn and the action is compelling. As in the Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy, young people struggle to be more than pawns in great schemes to which they are not privy. Like Pullman, Redick creates a sense of constant foreboding amid awareness of poorly understood menaces. Redick's readers, like Pullman's, cannot avoid that most imponderable of questions, “How can grown-ups be so stupid?” This first of four volumes, despite all the action, is really only exposition. Over the first three months of the Chathrand's voyage we achieve a better understanding of the characters and the issues that drive them, but the story doesn't come close to a resolution. I look forward to reading the rest of the series. show less

Another one of my favorites, Robert V. S. Redick spins a splendid tale on the high seas about the voyage of the Chathrand, the last remaining great ship which can sail across the Ruling Sea, and it’s assumed demise.

The Red Wolf Conspiracy is a book that had been on my radar for some time. I decided to finally give it a go this fall, and it quickly became one of the few novels I truly could not put down. I found myself sneaking around the house to get in another chapter – or even a page – when I was supposed to be doing something else (like tending to my four year old daughter or cleaning the dishes).

What was it about Red Wolf that I loved so much? First, I loved the writing. Robert V. S. Redick’s language brings you square into show more a fantasy pirate setting where you can taste the ocean spray on your lips, feel the sting of its salt in your eyes, and hear the tolling of the harbor bells as you drift past them on your loosely lashed together raft. The story is written so teens can enjoy it and adults can love it. No foul language fills these pages, just a lot of dreamy adventure. I haven’t read any of the Redwall series, but from what I do know of those beloved books I imagine this novel is similar in a lot of ways yet at a more advanced level appealing to both younger and older crowds.

The characters were defined quite well, and the fact that the main protagonist’s only magical power is the ability to understand other languages is quite unique. A talking animal (a mink I think) plays the part of a powerful sorcerer from another world on a mission to save both worlds from an evil wizard. Some may think talking animals amount to a childish story and not want to read it. Okay. Well you can feel that way, but you’ll be missing out on a great, great book!

The story line itself is linear, very orderly and filled with excellent scenes. One scene in particular (an underwater scene for those who have read it – but I won’t go further for fear of spoiling) left me stunned at the visualization and originality the author employs. Red Wolf Conspiracy is actually only the first part of a longer story, so you are left hanging a little – but in a place where you don’t feel you have missed out on anything. I can’t wait to read the next book – I just need to find the time now… maybe a babysitter or a house cleaner.

Due to the gorgeous writing style, in depth characterization, and unique magic powers, I am very pleased to give The Red Wolf Conspiracy 5 out of 5 stars. show less