Review: Good urban fantasy read with a kick-butt female lead...
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 14, 2013
Heffner builds an extremely strong and powerful character while maintaining a softness that would seem illogical in the face of the life she's been forced to lead by environmental elements. This is a character who purposely gets lost on the streets of Seoul the first day she's there. Heffner poses this character to face incredible odds and imbues the reader with the sense of confidence in that she may not succeed but she will certainly do all she can to try.  The connection that the author builds between Citalli and her sister Raina is poignant. Raina has been an outcast of sorts in the family as she's the product of an affair. The sisters adore each other and as we get to know the duo, we know that nothing will stop Citalli when it comes to the well being of her sister.The Korean legends as passed to Citalli and intertwined with the story are fascinating and set the story above those novels that are similar. An aura of mystique and danger is intertwined in the idea that these other worldy happenings and the sickness that Marisol and now Raina experienced are common place in their society. It's almost viewed as a punishment for nebulous wrongs.  When you have a terrible bad invading your culture you find what can be done to prevent that bad from spreading. "The Year of the Wolf" is a very relatable tale in the sense that wrongs happen and the way to stop them from happening is seeking the source and destroying it - if the source can be destroyed.I had only a few issues with the work presented in "Year of the Wolf."  Heffner's POV transitions left something to be desired. The shift between Citalli and Raina was jarring in such a way where I had to go back read a few pages to catch on to what had just happened. I also thought, and this may sound crazy, that Raina was simply too nice. She was the fairy tale princess of the story in a lot of places. The girl has been through a great deal and has clearly been treated cruelly by other people in her family for much of her young life as she's a result of her mother's infidelity. In the end, her sweetness didn't matter but I would have understood had she been an angrier character and had Citalli still loved her despite birds not landing in her hair and helping her clean toilets (that didn't happen in the story, just setting the visual picture).While urban fantasy isn't generally a genre to which this reader would gravitate, I enjoyed "Year of the Wolf." Heffner's first novel is engrossing and, I'm sure, her writing has only gotten better. If you like fantasy with a strong real world base, pick this one up today.