Blacktail by Scott Hawkins
Crown
Publication Date: September 1st, 2026
Hardcover. 288 pages.
About Blacktail:
"'A tale of lupine vengeance—at first—whose stakes escalate to degrees I never saw coming. Unexpected, blood-soaked, and vividly told.'—qntm, author of There Is No Antimemetics Division
The long-awaited second novel from the author of the cult hit The Library at Mount Char, a one-of-a-kind dark fantasy in which a wolf sets out on an epic journey of revenge.
The wolf Blacktail is faithful to his Forest God, but in these times, faith is not enough. His world is besieged by men. Soon his territory will be overrun, and then there will be nowhere left to go. When his mate, a house dog, is killed, Blacktail rebels. He invades the house of her owners, seeking vengeance.
Blacktail’s fury catches the notice of an ancient and terrible feline witch, who makes an offer. What if Blacktail could end the human race responsible for the death of his family and for the destruction of the natural world, altogether? To do so, Blacktail must find and wake the Forest God. Only He might stand against the plague of men. Blacktail knows that his north woods are dwindling to nothing. He sees no other choice.
As Blacktail journeys farther from his wild home and deeper into the world of man, he encounters strangers—animal, mortal, and otherworldly—who, for their own reasons, want to help Blacktail rid the world of humans. Along the way, it becomes clear that he is more than just a wolf. The Forest God is sleeping, yes. But what will be the price of waking him?"
I have such a mixture of thoughts about Blacktail. I was fully on board with the beginning of Blacktail's revenge journey and was rooting him on. I found myself incredibly curious to see where everything would take him, but as the story progressed, it started to feel like that initial motivation started to get lost. As a result, I ended up losing my connection to Blacktail and his journey as I made my way through the story, and I realized I was never really that hooked on the story. I kept reading because I was curious enough to see what would happen, which is a good sign, but also because I kept expecting something to happen that would make me think, "Ah-ha! Now I get," but that moment just never really came. I don't regret reading this one, but I'm quite perplexed by it. This review is probably going to end up being a bit all over the place as well (much like how I felt this book was, a bit), but I'll do my best to share all my thoughts by the end of it if you plan to stick around.
There are some genuinely fascinating ideas explored throughout this book, particularly surrounding the "hunt" and everything it represents: the honor and pride associated with it, the meaning behind it, and the ways in which it can be disrespected, degraded, or even transformed into something entirely different. I also really loved the idea of the "scent poems," which immediately made me think of how I love to let my dog catch up on what I call "all the neighborhood dog gossip" with his extensive sniffing on our morning walks.
As someone who is extremely sensitive to violence involving animals, this was a hard read at times and I would not recommend it to someone who is similarly sensitive without a large amount of caution. Sure, this story is told from the point of view of a wolf, so of course there is a lot of "violence" and "brutality" that is just a part of nature, but that doesn't necessarily mean I have to enjoy reading it. And, as becomes increasingly apparent as the story progresses, I felt that there was definitely a bit more going on than just the natural brutality of life as an animal.
There are also humans, or "two-legs," who appear throughout the story, and almost all of them are quite terrible to the animals, so I also really hated reading those portions as well. My sensitivity to animal violence obviously has nothing to do with the Scott Hawkins or his writing, so I don't count that into my rating of the quality of the story, but it still definitely affected my personal enjoyment of it.
What I can attribute to the writing, however, was his crafting of the characters. They somehow felt both authentic and stilted to me at the same time. These are obviously animals, and I understand that Hawkins had to find some way to translate their experiences and communication into something understandable to us, but I found the execution of this very jarring. I'd almost say there's a bit of a fable-like quality to the way they speak at times, where it feels not quite natural, and the mimicking of the way humans speak really threw me off. The opening scenes feature some lynxes, and the way they immediately were speaking and thinking felt extremely off to me. Their dialogue felt like some strange combination of natural human speech and distinctly animal-like thoughts and behaviors, and unfortunately that blend just never really worked for me. There was also an odd mix of what felt like deeper, thoughtful pieces of dialogue that were then followed up with something that felt weirdly immature or just didn't fit with the rest of the scene. I'm still not entirely sure if this was the intended affect that Hawkins was going for or what was really going on, but it's one thing that didn't work for me throughout most of the book, and left it feeling like a less experienced writer had written this.
I really kept finding myself surprised that this was from the author of The Library at Mount Char at first--at least until we hit the ending, which definitely felt a bit more Hawkins-like. I can absolutely see some similarities in the weirdness, brutality, and thought-provoking ideas, but the writing itself felt much more all over the place to me here and did not feel like it had a cohesive plan in place. We really jump around a bit, and what started as a fairly straightforward plot idea soon morphed into something that had a lot of potential, but didn't quite end up landing with what it was going for, at least in my opinion.
At the same time, I can see the meaning and purpose behind this story. Blacktail himself loses sight of things as his journey progresses, so perhaps it make sense that we as readers begin to lose some of that connection to him and his original story as well. But if that idea doesn't make for a compelling reading experience that I liked in some way, then I'm not sure the execution worked quite well enough for it to be doing that. The intentionality might be there, but it needs a bit more than that.
But, what I consider a positive is how much this story made me feel. I felt disgust, hatred, fear, concern, sadness--this is definitely a brutal story and not for the faint of heart. I always have to give a book credit for provoking strong emotions, because to me, making a reader feeling something from the words you've written on a page is some level of success to me, and I always prefer negative feelings over ones of complete apathy about a book.
Overall, I'm still perplexed. I don't regret reading Blacktail, and there are some really interesting ideas, but I never fully connected with the story and there were a lot of things that just simply didn't work for me. I would say that if you loved The Library at Mount Char and have been anxiously awaiting another Scott Hawkins book, then I absolutely think Blacktail is worth trying for yourself. I think it's worth trying out to see fi it will work for you better than it worked for me. But if you're sensitive to animal violence like I am, then please do take caution. (I'm also more than happy to provide additional details or answer questions about the content for anyone who wants to know what they're getting into before deciding whether to read it.) If you do end up reading it, please let me know what you thought of it, as I'm definitely curious to see the reception for this one!
*I received a copy of Blacktail courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This has no effect on my rating or enjoyment.*
Buy the book: Amazon | Bookshop.org
