WOLFISH

A prophecy, a bad king, and a lost heir or two.

Alba, the Oracle-Apprentice, hates the bad news she’s always forced to deliver. Though she often lies to give her supplicants better prophecies than the foretelling demands, she isn’t always stronger than the magic. The newly crowned boy king (cognitively disabled, interested only in cooked cream, and at the mercy of manipulative, power-hungry adults) is brought to Alba for an augury, and despite her kindest intent, the prophetic vapors speak a dread warning through her: “Murderous worm,” she calls him, declaring that he’ll be destroyed by his mother’s unborn child. Thus does the king become selfish and wicked, and thus are his mother’s twins vanished off into the wilderness, where they survive to bring about his inevitable downfall. One twin is a girl, Rae, raised by a kindly shepherd, while the other turns into a wolf and periodically growls “Rommm.” This retelling of the Romulus and Remus legend isn’t explicitly connected to the mythology despite some Roman trappings. In this slow moving, ellipsis-laden, dreamy morality story, the goodness of Rae and Alba overcomes the selfish cruelty of the nameless king. Characters are light-skinned.

Overlong, with tranquilizing prose: a tough sell for a story about 12-year-olds.