An ode to the Werewolf: fantasy fiction's most popular shape-shifter

As I was reading George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice & Fire, I inhaled Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness sequence to take the edge off the man’s misogyny. I was planning to read her Immortals series between the next two GRRM books, though I only got around to them during another bout of misery in early December, when I applied to graduate school. (Also why I haven’t been around, if you were wondering) You will be happy to know it’s even better than expected. Unlike Alanna from the Lioness books, our heroine in these novels, Daine, isn’t a noble. She has the more useful gift of shapeshifting, alongside a “wild magic” that allows her to talk to animals and heal them. As a result, she’s as surrounded by amazing animals as Alanna was by magical men, and Daine’s dragons are all too literal. One of them, Big Blue, even made my top ten dragons. (Others include Tolkien’s Smaug, Erikson’s schizophrenic ghost Curdle-Telorast and Angel’s Cordelia) I don’t mean to imply, though, that Daine’s man isn’t perfection itself. I’ve never taken to a mage as quickly as I did to Numair. He has crinkly eyes and gentle hands and he wanders about turning people into trees. Despite my fondness for most things Numair, I was mighty alarmed by the age difference (he’s double her age) and the knowledge that she’s still a teen when they declare lifelong fealty. The books register this concern, and perhaps it’s perfectly logical for them to fall headlong into each other’s arms after their many adventures together, though my alarm wasn’t helped by the master-student aspect of their relationship. It’s all too Pygmalion for me (I’m the only reader in history to dislike Eliza Doolittle). Thanks to these quibbles, their romance failed evoke any electricity for this reader, and I’ll be relying on Alanna’s boys during future romantic exigencies. I turn to Daine, instead, for her habit of taking flight as an osprey or relapsing into lupine ways at a moment’s notice. [caption id=“attachment_169956” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Direwolves. Wikimedia Commons”]  [/caption] At this stage I ought confess I adore shape-shifters. They’re my favourite people in any book, and one of the many reasons I detest GRRM is the cavalier manner in which he treats his. I cried for hours after the deaths of the direwolves, and the warg-wildlings beyond the Wall are my one remaining incentive to read the next book, The Winds of Winter. For a more nuanced take on the wolves of war, I refer you, as always, to Steven Erikson’s Malazan series. Speculative fiction in our century domesticates its werewolves, the most common species of shapeshifter in popular culture. Whether it is Oz on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or George on Being Human, or Remus Lupin from the Potter novels, the werewolf is an afflicted figure, living with a curse as cruel as it is involuntary. It is their humanity that’s emphasised; these werewolves are characters capable of greater compassion than most. This acceptance has been lately won. Mythical werewolves were very different beasts from modern kinds. For much of their history in the human imagination, there was no evil worse than the wolf: servant of seduction and chaos; harbingers of Ragnarök. The degeneration of the wolf was inevitable once the danger they symbolise— the hungry wild— became a rapidly fading human experience. Such hunger has been replaced by the urbane predation of vampires. Vampires, a species we all know I have an unhealthy fondness for , corrupt humanity with their hedonist ways. Werewolves, by contrast, have become unlucky accidents, regular humans who have inadvertent contact with the supernatural. Everyone, werewolves reassure us, hides some kind of beast within. And if that’s not solace, really, what is? I undertook the grisly task for an essay on GRRM for Caravan magazine, which was published in this month’s epic anniversary issue Happy new year, folks. I hope yours was as triumphant as mine.