Shadow of the Wolf
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Book Description
A thrilling action-adventure novel set in contemporary Russia for all fans of Bond and Bourne.
Product Description
In the aftermath of an apparent terrorist attack, the headquarters of an American oil company haemorrhages chemical-pink smoke into the Moscow smog. A Russian army captain carrying a priceless Fabergé egg and digital evidence of horrific wartime atrocities is murdered and relieved of both these prizes. And in the snowy mountains of southern Russia, a terrorist named Abreg-who once held Volk captive in a Chechen mud pit-hatches a plan to lure him back into his grasp.
Shadow of the Wolf finds covert agent Colonel Alexei Volkovoy grieving for his lost love, Valya, and struggling to stay afloat in a world of political intrigue and underground plots. But when he takes out his anger on the wrong man, he gains a powerful enemy in the highest reaches of the Kremlin...
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I'm not a huge fan of the action-thriller genre (at least in writing, films are another matter), but since I'd read the first installment of the "Volk" series (Volk's Game), I figured I'd check this one out to see how the Russian supersoldier is getting along. The answer is: pretty much the same. In the first book, the ex-special forces antihero ran around Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, and New York in a desperate hunt for a long-lost Da Vinci painting sought after by a number of factions, including his shadowy Army General boss and the ruthless Azeri mafioso at the top of Moscow's organized crime. In this adventure, it's a long-lost Fabrege Egg that Volk's supposed to track down on behalf of "The General."
However, that's not all, as the author piles on plenty of other plotlines, including a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by a pedophile, a video of a Russian Army war crime in Chechnya, the bombing of an oil company office, the grisly torture and murder of Russian ex-soldiers, the missing daughter of a U.S. Senator, and executive-level intrigue regarding oil pipelines. If this sounds like a few too many ingredients, it is. The book moves at breakneck pace, jumping between all these different plotlines while never providing much depth for any of them. As in the first book there are tons of twists, turns, and betrayals of all kinds, along with plenty of fisticuffs, gunplay, knifing, and whatnot, as the mostly unstoppable Volk leaves bodies in his wake in his search for answers.
After spending most of the first two-thirds of the book in Moscow, the action in the third act takes Volk back the Caucuses, where he will confront demons from his past, as well as an angel. The climax is pretty much as one would expect, and while satisfying in a grim sense, the book is unlikely to leave readers with a very positive feeling about the state of contemporary Russia.(It's worth noting that this is a case where reading the previous volk book is probably a very good idea, as there are various elements and relationships established in that book that are glossed over in this one.)
Worthwhile nonfiction companions to this book might include: journalist Anna Politkovskaya's two books Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy and The Dirty War, David Satter's Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, ex-soldier Arkady Babchenko's terribly titled memoir One Soldier's War, Sebastian Smith's Allah's Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya, photographer Stanley Greene's harrow photos in Open Wound, Chechen doctor Khassan Baiev's memoir The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire, and Yo'av Karney's regional travelogue/history Highlanders.
However, that's not all, as the author piles on plenty of other plotlines, including a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by a pedophile, a video of a Russian Army war crime in Chechnya, the bombing of an oil company office, the grisly torture and murder of Russian ex-soldiers, the missing daughter of a U.S. Senator, and executive-level intrigue regarding oil pipelines. If this sounds like a few too many ingredients, it is. The book moves at breakneck pace, jumping between all these different plotlines while never providing much depth for any of them. As in the first book there are tons of twists, turns, and betrayals of all kinds, along with plenty of fisticuffs, gunplay, knifing, and whatnot, as the mostly unstoppable Volk leaves bodies in his wake in his search for answers.
After spending most of the first two-thirds of the book in Moscow, the action in the third act takes Volk back the Caucuses, where he will confront demons from his past, as well as an angel. The climax is pretty much as one would expect, and while satisfying in a grim sense, the book is unlikely to leave readers with a very positive feeling about the state of contemporary Russia.(It's worth noting that this is a case where reading the previous volk book is probably a very good idea, as there are various elements and relationships established in that book that are glossed over in this one.)
Worthwhile nonfiction companions to this book might include: journalist Anna Politkovskaya's two books Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy and The Dirty War, David Satter's Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State, ex-soldier Arkady Babchenko's terribly titled memoir One Soldier's War, Sebastian Smith's Allah's Mountains: The Battle for Chechnya, photographer Stanley Greene's harrow photos in Open Wound, Chechen doctor Khassan Baiev's memoir The Oath: A Surgeon Under Fire, and Yo'av Karney's regional travelogue/history Highlanders.
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Volk's Shadow, AKA Shadow of the Wolf, is the second Volk book. I wrote this on the first Volk book, Volk's Game:
"As much as reviewers would like to think Volk is a good guy, he isn't. Or at least he wasn't when he was the protagonist of Volk's Game. He was a Russian mafioso who ran a small/medium-sized racketeering enterprise for both Moscow's mafia kingpin & a military secret society, serving the latter primarily as an earner (& not an undercover agent as some think). His repertoire makes Goodfellas look like good citizens. You need not read more than a couple of chapters to see this. I won't come to his defence. However, I'll raise two points.
(1) He fits the world of Volk's Game. He is a thief among theives (a la Richard Stark's Parker). In the sequals, he's transformed into, first, an assassin with a pseudo-conscience, &, then, into a Russian James Bond with pseudo-morals (killing bad guys by missiles fired from drones).
(2) In Volk's Game, his saving grace, for the lack of a better term, is his self-sacrifice for the woman he loves, whom he risks his life for despite knowing she may love another (a woman no less).
In the sequals, he's no more interesting than a self-righteous psychopath. I'm not against psychopaths per se. I enjoy Patricia Highsmith's Ripley. But Ripley was never self-righteous. In Volk's Game, we're observing the machinations of a professional bad guy. In the sequals, we're fed self-justifying internal monologues one after another. In the forth book, we're put in the POV of a character (not Volk) psyching himself up for torture, with an internal monologue on why torture is moral. I stopped reading at this point & will not read a fifth book if there is one. The Russian underworld, an exotic wonderland, I want to view from behind the looking-glass. So-called good guys indulging in moral pronouncements while killing & torturing I don't want to read about."
Addendum: Half of Volk's Shadow (told in flashback) is set in the war zones of Chechnya & reads like a war story rather than a crime story. The quality of the Volk books took big a nose dive from here onwards.
"As much as reviewers would like to think Volk is a good guy, he isn't. Or at least he wasn't when he was the protagonist of Volk's Game. He was a Russian mafioso who ran a small/medium-sized racketeering enterprise for both Moscow's mafia kingpin & a military secret society, serving the latter primarily as an earner (& not an undercover agent as some think). His repertoire makes Goodfellas look like good citizens. You need not read more than a couple of chapters to see this. I won't come to his defence. However, I'll raise two points.
(1) He fits the world of Volk's Game. He is a thief among theives (a la Richard Stark's Parker). In the sequals, he's transformed into, first, an assassin with a pseudo-conscience, &, then, into a Russian James Bond with pseudo-morals (killing bad guys by missiles fired from drones).
(2) In Volk's Game, his saving grace, for the lack of a better term, is his self-sacrifice for the woman he loves, whom he risks his life for despite knowing she may love another (a woman no less).
In the sequals, he's no more interesting than a self-righteous psychopath. I'm not against psychopaths per se. I enjoy Patricia Highsmith's Ripley. But Ripley was never self-righteous. In Volk's Game, we're observing the machinations of a professional bad guy. In the sequals, we're fed self-justifying internal monologues one after another. In the forth book, we're put in the POV of a character (not Volk) psyching himself up for torture, with an internal monologue on why torture is moral. I stopped reading at this point & will not read a fifth book if there is one. The Russian underworld, an exotic wonderland, I want to view from behind the looking-glass. So-called good guys indulging in moral pronouncements while killing & torturing I don't want to read about."
Addendum: Half of Volk's Shadow (told in flashback) is set in the war zones of Chechnya & reads like a war story rather than a crime story. The quality of the Volk books took big a nose dive from here onwards.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A great follow on to Volk's Game. This is Russia's James Bond, the stories are hard and fast moving, pity that Valya is hurt.
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