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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780142300305
ISBN number: 0142300306
Label: Puffin
Manufacturer: Puffin
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 240
Printing Date: October 01, 2001
Publishing house: Puffin
Age index: Young Adult
Sale Popularity Level: 549293
Studio: Puffin
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
All her life, Claidi has endured hardship in the House, where she must obey a spoiled princess. Then a golden stranger arrives, living proof of a world beyond the House walls. Claidi risks all to free the charming prisoner and accompanies him across the Waste toward his faraway home. It is a difficult yet marvelous journey, and all the while Claidi is at the side of a man she could come to love. That is, until they reach his home . . . and the Wolf Tower.
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Rated by buyers 
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Claidi is a maid to a mean princess in a prison-like castle surrounded by the Wastes. Her life changes when the lion-haired Nemain crashes his balloon into the castle. Told she is a princess, she rescues the prince and heads for adventures among the peoples of the Waste with Nemain. Smitten with Nemain (who doesn't treat her well), Claidi follows him blindly to his home, rejecting the love of a "thief" she meets in the Waste. Tanith Lee's writing style is convoluted and distracting. The story is boring and predictable, an endless and tedious journey with the ending clearly spelled out; the characters are flat and banal and hardly empathetic. Wish I had spent the time reading Gail Carson Levine, Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones, or Douglass Adams. Grade: D-
Rated by buyers -
Serving girl Claidi labors at the whim of a selfish and spoiled princess in a palace garden surrounded on all sides by a vast toxic wasteland. When a stranger from the outside is captured, Claidi joins in a conspiracy to escape with him, and they set out on a journey back to his home city.
The entire story is written in diary form, which adds an element of charm and innocence to the writing style. Claidi voices her doubts and her uncertainties, but also shows a clever cynical wit that will serve her well in the adventures to come.
Those adventures lead her to a village of folk who can talk to their sheep. She is nearly thrown off a cliff in a ritual sacrifice at another village, and she falls in with a group of nomadic bandits, eventually befriending their leader, and finding herself forced to choose between two men she has come to care for.
Her choice leads to a cruel betrayal, and a final chance for Claidi to take control of her own destiny. And boy does she ever!
I felt the middle of this story suffered from too much of Claidi as a passive observer, someone that things happen to. The heavily-cliched and predictible sacrifice sequence didn't help matters, although it's a fairly minor scene that is over quickly.
The climactic chapters more than make up for this as Claidi's final act of self-liberation is one that I found myself cheering for.
Lee's setting has a vaguely post-apocalyptic feel to it, with an odd menagerie of mutated animals from giant tame blue aligators to talking sheep. There is not magic in the sense of sorcery, but there is quite a bit of forgotten technology that functions as magic for all intents and purposes in this world. Claidi, as diarist, gives us more description of some cultures than others depending on her moods, and she is quick to judge, sometimes paying the price when her initial assessments are proven wrong. The level of detail that we do get is fairly good, and several of the civilizations that are described come off as quite intriguing. A few, like the horse-nomads that Claidi befriends, are fairly stereotypical. The romantic plotline is also pretty straightforward, although the intrigue that surrounds the reason for Claidi being chosen to help the prisoner escape ends up being both complex and well thought out.
Claidi is presented in a likeable voice that has a modern rhythm to it. Although there are places where the illusion of the diary falls away as the more complex narration comes to the fore, Lee always manages to bring the reader back to the diary style with an offhand remark or an abrupt aside from Claidi.
The is an enjoyable bit of young adult fantasy/romance that presents a detailed world and gives us a growing, likeable heroine to be our guide. Not everything here is original, plot-wise, but the strong finish makes the climax of Wolf Tower well worth the journey.
Rated by buyers -
This book immediately caught my attention from the very first sentences "Yes. I stole this. This book." Not the best grammar, but that's because it's written in journal format in the view of a sixteen-year-old girl. Claidi is not your average fantasy heroine. Not only is she a slave in the dreaded House, but she's also moody, funny and perfectly believable. The world that she lives in is a fantasy realm, but I expected all the details of it to be crammed in there with all the names of the countries and cities and all that, like Tamora Pierce's books. I was pleasantly surprised.
Claidi has never been outside of the House other than when she was a small girl, so when a handsome prince turns up (don't worry, Nemian doesn't "sweep her off her feet out yonder window"), we learn about the world outside the House just as Claidi does. This book, through the travels of Tanith Lee's fascinating world, breaks through the all the stereotypes of a typical fantasy. Claidi's handsome prince turns out to be a dud, evil old women plot, Claidi falls in love with somebody worthy of being a prince and the plot unfolds with beautiful descriptive details.
The ending is perfectly satisfying, but also makes you want to read the rest of the series. Don't worry if you're not a fan of series books--I'm not, either, and this has been by far the best series I've ever read. I haven't regretted buying this book.
Before the bookn eve begins, there is an epigraph that teaches the most important lesson, describes the whole book and does it so subtly--
"break the rules."
Rated by buyers 
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This book has a fascinating plot, unique set of characters, and an idea behind it that is riveting and attractive to me. However, after I finished the book I was turned off from the rest of the series by the fact that Claidi often uses swear words in her entries that she picked up from her crush, Nemian. I sincerely wish that Ms. Lee had not spoiled this wonderful fantasy with a smatter of profanity. Please use good judgement before you decide to read this book.
Rated by buyers -
When I very first opened the book in Borders, I found the opening pages interesting - I liked Claidi's character and her style of writing, in a journal. These aspects were enough to push me into buying the novel.
Imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the book had no plot.
It's true; after the very first few pages, the ones that had hooked me, the story totally fell apart. Claidi's character became less and less likeable; her naivete, quaint at first, became progressively more annoying. The writing style became nothing like a journal. And as I said, there was no plot. The tale meandered meaninglessly across the Waste, meeting people of different cultures, until finally returning to Nemian's home, the Wolf Tower. During all this, Claidi demonstrates her remarkable depth of character (less than a puddle's worth).
I rarely rate books this low, but this one left me wondering how it could have possibly been published. If you thirst for good fantasy, read Tamora Pierce (The Immortals Quartet), Vivian Vande Velde (Heir Apparent), Hilari Bell (The Farsala Trilogy) - or even a cookbook, which has a better plot than Wolf Tower.
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