Wolf-Dreams by Michael D. Weaver is the first in a fantasy trilogy. Published by Avon Books in May 1987, mass market paperback format, 186 pages.

Michael D. Weaver (1961-1998) had seven novels published between 1987-1996. I read Bloodfang (1989), the last in the trilogy sometime back. I don’t remember when I read the novel. I think I bought it used sometime in the 90s. I don’t remember hardly anything about the novel outside that it had a woman warrior.

I came across Wolf-Dreams a year or two back and decided to read it. The novel has a framing sequence narrated by “Gerald.” The novel shifts to Thyri and her cousin (and lover) Astrid travelling in winter when a wolf attacks them. The wolf kills Astrid and wounds Thyri who kills the wolf.

The first third of the novel are told in a non-linear fashion with Astrid going off to train with Scatha. A few years later, Astrid takes Thyri for training. Thyri becomes a werewolf during the full moon and kills her mother among others.

There is a middle portion with Thryi shipwrecked on a fantasy island off the coast of Ireland. She joins the local king’s army, kills an evil sorcerer, and gets a boat to travel to the west.

The last portion of the novel is in North America with Thyri joining up with a tribe of American Indians (and more lesbianism). There is a genocidal war with another tribe that is eventually driven back with the help of other werewolves.

There is the end frame chapter narrated by Gerald that I could not make heads or tails out of.

I did not like this novel. Weaver skimmed a little Norse background, some Irish myth, and almost embarrassing American Indian (“tribe who lives next to the river water” or something like that). The Broken Sword this is not.

There were plenty of women warrior novels by the late 1980s. Lynn Abbey’s Daughter of the Bright Moon from 1979 might be the first one. C. J. Cherryh’s The Paladin and Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword are two others that come to mind. I like Eowyn from Lord of the Rings and Joseph Payne Brennan’s pulpy adventures of Kerza the Celt but not very receptive to the sub-genre due to the poor entries I have read.

I found Wolf-Dreams to be rather plodding. It took me way longer to read the book than I would normally as kept falling asleep when reading it. Just another fantasy novel from the 1980s that had one printing and has disappeared.