Name: Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves
Rating: 3.982142857142857 (14 reviews)
ISBN: 9781250785060

Meg Long

Meg Long's Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is a captivating debut about survival, found family, and the bond between a girl and a wolf that "delivers a fresh twist on classic survival stories and frontier myths"...

A Novel

Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves

Balto in Space! A found-family adventure on a treacherous ice planet, where the stakes are high and anything on this planet could kill you. Sena’s tendency to blame herself for everything (even things far behind her control) resonated so much. No romance, just friendship with her wolf and her team of scientist friends.

CW: violence, classism & in-world racism, injury (people and animals) including frostbite

Liz Griffin

Balto in Space! A found-family adventure on a treacherous ice planet, where the stakes are high and anything on this planet could kill you. Sena’s tendency to blame herself for everything (even things far behind her control) resonated so much. No romance, just friendship with her wolf and her team of scientist friends.

CW: violence, classism & in-world racism, injury (people and animals) including frostbite

Paige Green

Disclaimer: I received this e-arc from the publisher. Thanks! All opinions are my own.

Book: Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves

Author: Meg Long

Book Series: Standalone

Rating: 5/5

Diversity: f/f romance mentioned

Recommended For...: young adult readers, sci-fi, dystopian, survival

Publication Date: January 11, 2022

Genre: Young Adult Dystopian

Age Relevance: 16+ (animal gore, animal fighting, animal death, language, violence, gore, death)

Explanation of Above: There is a lot of animal gore in the book and mentions of animal fighting. There are also a few animal deaths. There is cursing throughout the book. There is also violence, including gun violence, gore with blood and other injuries, and death mentioned and one gruesome death shown.

Publisher: Wednesday Books

Pages: 368

Synopsis: After angering a local gangster, seventeen-year-old Sena Korhosen must flee with her prize fighting wolf, Iska, in tow. A team of scientists offer to pay her way off her frozen planet on one condition: she gets them to the finish line of the planet’s infamous sled race. Though Sena always swore she’d never race after it claimed both her mothers’ lives, it’s now her only option.

But the tundra is a treacherous place, and as the race unfolds and their lives are threatened at every turn, Sena starts to question her own abilities. She must discover whether she's strong enough to survive the wild – whether she and Iska together are strong enough to get them all out alive.

Review: Overall, this book was really good. The book is full of action and adventure. The story is compelling and I really loved Sena as a character. The book has an Iditarod race feel to it and I really liked that. The character development was well done, as was the world building, and overall it’s a good story.

However, I did really hate all of the animal violence scenes and  I was confused at some points during the book, especially with a lot of the back and forth. 

Verdict: It was good!


Lauren Sullivan

I’m a sucker for kid-and-their-dog books, and this is a high-stakes scifi version of that. It’s the perfect book for reading while snowed in and cuddling your own dog.

“No wolves. No sleds. No racing.” I say it automatically despite the lump in my throat.
“Foolish rule for life on a planet that revolves around those three things,” she quips.”

Tundar, an Edge World, that has near constant electrical storms and a frigid climate. Corpos – giant corporations – attempted to terraform the world once, but just made it worse, exacerbating the weather and making the wildlife even more deadly. Sena grew up a child of two worlds and none, the daughter of an ex-racer, who trained the genetically engineered vonenwolves for the famous Tundar race, and a scavver, who believes that the race, to mine a rare ingredient, is unethical. She grew up learning how to care for injured vonenwolves and the scavver ways of living with the planet. But after her mothers die in the race, Sena refuses to have anything to do with the race anymore. On a world that revolves around the race, that means she’s left with pickpocketing and not much else, and before long she’s in trouble with one of the crime bosses.

“They think they can just take a piece of Tundar without giving anything back. But that’s not how it works here. Nothing taken, nothing given.”

Sena is honestly half-feral herself. Traumatized and determined to be independent, even as a young teen, Sena’s cut herself off from anyone and anything that could get between her and somehow earning enough money to leave the planet. She’s impetuous, frequently acting or speaking before she thinks, which lands her into trouble about as often as you’d expect. Sena’s constantly leaping from one bad situation to another, and that’s what drives most of the book’s plot. And while she’s not afraid to fight for what she wants, she’s also got firm lines she won’t cross. Her scavver äma taught her to respect life, even that of vonenwolves, whom everyone else seems to view as expendable components. It’s that connection with the wolves that leads her to get involved with Iska, an injured fighting wolf that belongs to one of the crime bosses. Sena’s a loner, and the last thing she wants is a connection to anyone, including a wolf, but her continued survival on Tundar depends on joining a racing team, and Iska seems to have her own ideas.

“Sometimes you don’t get to pick your family. Sometimes, they show up and pick you and you have to embrace it. And that wolf picked you.”

The slow build of the relationship between Sena and Iska was one of my favorite parts of the book. Watching Sena slowly accept her trauma – and understand that accepting help from others isn’t a weakness – was the heart of the book. The world building was surprisingly interesting for something that’s, well, just a scifi version of Alaska. I mean, Tundar is, after all, just “tundra” with one letter switched, and a lot of the fauna Sena encounters have Earth analogs, like reindeer and polar bears. Vonenwolves, in fact, are hybrids of the native vonen mixed with Earth wolf and dog DNA. They’re genetically engineered to pull sleds and not much else. The secondary characters were also fun. Remy – and her sense of humor – and Pena were my favorites. Where the book faltered was in the pacing. Sena is constantly faced with the consequences of her impetuousness, hopping from one disaster to another, so it’s not like nothing is happening, but some of those threads and characters never felt fully developed. It takes about half of the book before we even get to the race, but wow, once that happens, the book really picks up. The author’s prose is evocative of the snowy wastelands Sena and her team have to cross, and it made me very happy to be huddled up under a blanket with a warm drink.

“We race the cold and night, my wolf and I.”

Overall, while it takes a while to get going, this book was full of action and heart, and I particularly loved the ending. I would happily read a sequel! This is a very promising debut and I’m excited to see what this author comes up with next.

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Content notes: (view spoiler)[character death, animal death, animal abuse (including fighting), violence (including murder and gun violence), bullying, bigotry, parental death (before book starts), grief, torture (hide spoiler)]

juliana

I'm very picky about my YA reads these days but i really enjoyed this one very much. A fresh story that i couldn't put down, I’m a sucker for survival stories and wolves so it was meant to be :)… 4.5/5 ⭑'s

Courtney Passio

An epic story about a girl who just wants to escape her world and a wolf who was bred purely to be vicious are thrusted into a deadly, high stakes race with very little hope of survival. 

Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is set on a highly uninhabitable frozen wasteland of a planet where every creature that happens to live on it, is extremely deadly and out to get anyone and anything for a quick meal. This entire planet has absolutely nothing going for it except this deadly race that happens once a year and where plenty of people hope to make some sort of money by the end of it. And that’s what our main character Sena wants, to make enough money to get off of the planet that has nothing to offer her. Even if it means competing in a race that tore apart her family and took everything she’s ever cared about away from her. 

I actually bumped this book up a star because it surprisingly brought tears to my eyes which, by the way, is HIGHLY unusual for me. It did take quite some time, like half of the book, to get to the high stakes race part BUT I think that was important because we really learned what kind of character Sena was. She’s alone with not much to lose and all she wants is to escape. I think that’s a really important part of the theme for this book so don’t let it get you down. 

But what I loved most about this book? The bond between wolf and girl. I’m a sucker for animals and prayed the entire time I was reading this book that the wolf would make it out alive in the end. Which, I won’t say what happened either way *insert wink face*. But I freaking loved the fierceness of this wolf and the pure joy she brought not only me, but Sena. This book is about finding your own version of a family and you know what was a breath of fresh air? The fact that there was absolutely zero romance. I honestly thought I couldn’t enjoy a book that had no romance but this book proved me wrong. This is also a story about a found family and I know we all love that. 

Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is Meg Long’s debut novel and I for one can’t wait to see what else she brings to the table. 

Sarah Jackson

Paola C

A lone girl determined to survive. The feral wolf she must learn to trust. Only one chance to escape their icy planet: a race across the deadly tundra. Seventeen-year-old Sena Korhosen hates the sled race, especially after it claimed both her mothers' lives five years ago. Alone on her frozen planet, she makes money any other way she can--until she double-crosses a local gangster. Desperate to escape, Sena flees with his prized fighting wolf, Iska, and takes an offer from a team of scientists. They'll pay her way off-world, on one condition--that she uses the survival skills her mothers taught her to get them to the end of the race. But the tundra is a treacherous place. When the race threatens their lives at every turn, Sena must discover whether her abilities are enough to help them survive the wild, and whether she and Iska together are strong enough to get them all out alive. As the girl and the wolf forge a tenuous bond and fight to escape ice goblins, giant bears, and the ruthless gang leader intent on trapping them both, one question drives them relentlessly forward: Where do you turn when there is nowhere to hide? Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves is a captivating, breathless debut about survival and found family that delivers a fresh twist on classic survival stories.

Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves A Novel

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