Jiang Rong

When you see the phrase "steely gaze" in the first sentence of a book, you know you're in for a tough journey. Unfortunately things didn't improve by the end of the first chapter, with lots of inadvertent anthropomorphising and a very ugly, breathless style. A quick flick through the book revealed that it kept this up for over 500 hundred pages, so I bowed out after the first chapter.

I really did not know the wolves have so many quality. I was skeptic and I thought the plot was more about Chinese history and very very boring: my fault. Now I cannot put the book down and I am dreaming the stories of Lao Che and his copanions

Very dense book. Interesting with a lot to say about environmentalism and how society and the modern world change old cultures. There was a lot of anthropomorphism. The setting of the steppes was really a character in itself. You could really almost feel the place. Especially the winter.