Set on the Ukrainian steppe centuries before the birth of Christ, OF WIND AND WOLVES is a marvelous flight of fancy. Anaiti is the daughter of a king whose people, the Bastarnai, dwell on the edge of the steppe. Finding themselves under attack by a warlike tribe, they seek an alliance with the Skythai, and Anaiti finds herself betrothed to the Skythian king—but only if she proves herself in battle. We have precious little to go on beyond what archaeology and the exceptionally scanty written sources can tell us of life on the steppe centuries before the coming even of the Roman Empire, but J.M. Elliott paints a compelling picture.

Anaiti is a likable protagonist. Elliott has the ability to shift focus from the personal to the political; as negotiations for the alliance proceed, Anaiti begins her training among the Skythai. The woman-inhabiting-a-man’s-role trope is played upon a great deal in the opening half of the book, and it's hard to know how much resemblance it would bear to reality, but Elliott exploits the nebulous space between the historical and the ahistorical with much elan. Anaiti is satisfyingly complex, hankering for the warrior ways while also feeling trapped by her obligations. Her father recognizes that the Bastarnai are very much the junior partners in the alliance, and her betrothal is a matter of survival—Anaiti’s role one of duty.

With an unhurried pace, this first entry to The Steppe Saga series is told on an epic scale. In an age in which engagement rides roughshod over substantive storytelling, writing of such assuredness is hard indeed to find. Elliott's prose is elegant and dense with meaning; the descriptive language is naturalistic and pregnant with the sounds and smells of two thousand and more years ago.

There are, however, anachronisms that worm their way into both the dialogue and Anaiti’s internal monologue from time to time. At one point, the narrator expresses the need to “get the f*** out of here,” for example. Moments like this jolt the reader out of the world Elliott has built, but it's the only perverse creative decision in a work that will stand as a measure of what literature can achieve with a setting that's as dimly perceived as the clouds that fleck the steppe’s busy skies.

A magisterial evocation of life on the steppe, J.M. Elliott's OF WIND AND WOLVES crackles with tension.

~ Craig Jones for IndieReader