[Mrs. Y Reviews] The Son of The Wolf by Jack London

Book Cover via Amazon.com

Jack London died in 1916, long before Kindle and long before e-story collections. He wrote a lot of short stories, one of the first I remember was "To Build A Fire" which haunted me in high school. But this is a collection that was put together by some volunteers according to the blurb on Kindle. They set together several of his stories in a way, and they are keeping up with the e-book version. Kudos to the volunteers, that's an act of love of literature. Want to know more? Get your dogs ready, make sure you keep your feet warm and let’s get ready for a review of “The Son of the Wolf” by Jack London. 

Opinion

Hello my wonderful followers and readers of Y welcome back to the next installment of #StayClassyFeb reviews I am working on. Once again this is a book from the public domain and a classical author at that. Today, I am coming with you regarding a short story collection. This is as I mentioned something I found on Kindle and right now it’s free, so please pick up a copy if you are interested.



Let’s get into the first impressions of this book for the review. The cover is very basic as are the title pages. This doesn't give the initial impression that these are the works of the Yukon master who once terrified me with a tale of frostbite and a lucky dog.  Instead, this is a quiet sort of way to come in. The stories, however, are action-packed and have a lot of heart and soul to each one individually, which is something I rather enjoy about a short story collection.



Which leads me to my first critique and that is under the "Story Structure, Foundation and Presentation portion of my review scores. "The Son of The Wolf" has the feel of a rudimentary first-time never edited or saw a beta reader, indie published book. While I can tell that this collection was put together with love, I can also tell that there were some bumps in the road on how to put it together with the purpose of making it sell.



I also have an issue with the presentation, in that the title does it explain that this is a short story collection. The story it references isn't even the first story in the collection, it's the second one. I'm not sure why this was done, but I think it's not helpful to the grandness of the words within.



Though, I may have an explanation. I pondered perhaps the point of the understated cover, and the lack of the description in the title that this is a collection was to mirror the tone of the stories. I'm not sure, but if it's for an artistic sense, okay, you got me. So to those volunteers who put the collection together and, who may be reading my review, please know that I the reader know you cared about this story. I know it was you who gave love and time to this book. If the understated cover and lack of flare were precisely what the intent was, I do have some advice. Please reach out to others, such as the Twitter #WritersCommunity because there are ways to make improvements that are not going to break the bank. If it was intentional, please consider putting the short story collection element into the title to increase sales.



Now let’s go into the things I really enjoyed about this book. The first thing, whoever put the stories together in this order did so with care. This reads like a Tarintino film in the order, but that’s okay because the stories work well together and make the book more enjoyable. Though these are individual little stories that can be read in any order, the order that was placed was very good.



The stories all have similar themes and they all are enjoyable. Each story tells a unique whole story for itself. And yet, the overall collection tells a story together, which I really did enjoy. Overall I liked the pick and collection choices. It was very refreshing to have a series of stories that fit well together, tell an overall story, but each has their own identity.



Score


Having all of this in mind and after my math for the score, “The Son of the Wolf” by Jack London, receives a 78/100 making this collection the recipient of a 3-star review on Amazon and Goodreads.