Wolf Who Rules is the second novel in a human/elven crossover series set in Pittsburgh, though not exactly in Pennsylvania. This is a high fantasy/science fiction novel, a balance that works and makes me enjoy it all the more.

The premise of the series is that there’s a gate which can teleport Pittsburgh between dimensions, one of which is human norm and the other is elven with magic. The series focuses around Tinker, who has a knack for machinery that crosses both mechanical and magical barriers. She also has a kind heart and is blind to social differences.

As such, in the first book Tinker, she falls in love with and wins an elven lord, Wolf Who Rules, while being kidnapped, forced to help a third dimension’s beings, the Oni, who have no compassion and breed like rabbits. She commits mechanical/magical genius to save both elves and humans from the Oni, with the consequence that she’s transformed into an elf when her injuries are too much. Wolf Who Rules is a continuation of Tinker’s story, dealing with the aftereffects of her solution to the Oni, and both her relationship with Wolf Who Rules and her transformation.

I read Tinker a good number of years ago. I’d meant to read Wolf Who Rules pretty quickly, but I gave my copy to my son who had just finished the Ukiah Oregon series and was thrilled to read another Wen Spencer. By the time he gave it back, life had happened and it went on to the TBR pile with everything else.

When I heard a new book in the series was coming out, I planned to reread both of these, but somehow I ended up reading Wolf Who Rules first. It’s the mark of a good series that I wasn’t disoriented at all. Not only is the Tinker world complex, interesting, and colorful enough to have stuck in my memory despite the time between, but Wen also provides little reminders so that I didn’t have to struggle to remember who was in the previous book, and how those tangled relationships and betrayals should be influencing this one.

Since Tinker is my favorite of all the characters, the beginning seemed a little off with its focus on elven politics and social codes, but I didn’t have to wait long before Tinker shakes off the medicines given to help her heal and adjust to her transformation. She runs off to see what’s going on, and dumps herself in the middle of trouble, of course, right back to the Tinker I love.

The beginning politics and such were not a loss in any way, though. They have an immediate impact and put Tinker in an awkward position on many levels. Add in questions raised by prophetic dreams, a puzzle in the form of consequences from her desperate gamble in Tinker when a prisoner of the Oni, and the discovery that what the elves see as true might not be, and you have a fun, complex novel that makes you look at social and cultural situations in a different light. I regret that it took me so long to read my copy, but at the same time, now I’m psyched to read the new novel.

So if you haven’t read Wolf Who Rules, what are you waiting for? And if you have, what did you think of it?