The Sight by David Clement Davies, is a xenofictional novel about wolves and psychic powers.
A sequel has also been written: Fell. It focuses on the titular character as he goes on his own personal quest revolving around the Sight and another child, similar to the relationship between Larka and human-baby Bran. And there's Fire Bringer, which is also set in same universe, but in a different location.
This novel provides examples of:
- Accidental Child-Killer Backstory: Morgra didn't mean to kill a cub, despite what most wolves think. However the judgment on her drives her to true villainy.
- Alpha and Beta Wolves: The main wolf pack have this sort of ranking with fictional language words for alpha, beta and omega wolves, and only some of them are related - two parents and their children, the father's sister, her mate (whose relationship with her is noted to be unusual) and two others. Downplayed in that they are treated by the narrative as a family, and barring some Deliberate Values Dissonance in how they treat Bran act like one instead of a group trying to one-up each other.
- Animal Eye Spy: The Sight lets you do this with birds.
- Anti Anti Christ: Fell is the wolf equivalent of Satan, or at least Morgra uses his powers to deliberately invoke this and have him play the role of their mythological devil, who freaks out Tsinga just by his presence. He's also a sometimes unfriendly but ultimately reasonable wolf, who ends up siding with Larka after she reminds him of his past.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Larka dies, but appears as a heavenly figure to Kar at the end of the story, though whether this is real or just a dream is left ambiguous.
- Animal Talk: Aside from the obvious Translation Convention, the wolves also have their own language called varg. Examples include:
- Dragga - Alpha Male
- Drappa - Alpha Female
- Sikla - Omega
- Lera - Prey animals
- Anyone Can Die: No one is safe, not even the main pack, including Larka.
- Babies Ever After: A variant where The Hero Dies and it's her parents who have new cubs.
- Back for the Dead: After being Put on a Bus for much of the book, Skop returns to pull Kar out of his Sanity Slippage and then die.
- Back from the Dead: But only for about a chapter, thanks to Morgra performing the Summoning Howl.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Many wolves think the sight is a naturally bad power, but Larka clearly isn't a villain. Skart later explains that it is a fundamental part of nature that doesn't have a moral alignment.
- Barred from the Afterlife: All wolves are scared of drowning because they believe it will result in this.
- Beta Couple: Khaz and Kipcha. It's also kind of a literal example, as Khaz was a Beta in Huttser's pack.
- Big Bad: Morgra.
- Big Damn Heroes: Larka reunites with her parents just when they're about to be forced to kill each other on Slavka's orders. Later Kar shows up to save Larka from being trapped in the Red Meadow.
- Bittersweet Ending: The main family prevents Morgra from enslaving all of the Lera, but Larka is ultimately unable to escape her fated death, and the Vision has shown that humans are going to destroy the earth and create a dark time for the Lera. However Larka refuses to use her power to kill all of humanity because maybe they will be able to find the answers to the philosophical questions that have been plaguing her, and the book ends on a somewhat hopeful note that it doesn't have to end this way and humans may learn to be "more like wolves", because after all Larka learned in the Red Meadow that fate can be altered, although it is difficult. Meanwhile Palla and Huttser have more cubs.
- Blessed with Suck: While the Sight is often seen as an extraordinary gift, Larka is shown throughout the book to resent it half the time, especially when she can't hunt without feeling her prey's pain as she kills it.
- Blind Seer: Tsinga
- Blood Magic: According to the prophecy, there needs to be a sacrifice of blood to activate the Vision.
- Brainwashed: Morgra does this to Fell after she rescues him from the icy river.
- Break the Cutie: Both Larka and Kar go through a lot, losing their entire pack, Larka having to deal with her destiny and Kar being nearly killed in a fire and not taking well to being alone...
- Butt-Monkey: Poor Bran couldn't catch a break.
- Captain Ersatz: Larka has several similarities to Rannoch of Fire Bringer.
- Care-Bear Stare: Larka uses her memories of love and happiness to give Fell his memories back and dispel his anger.
- Carnivore Confusion: Prey animals are sentient and Larka can feel their pain when she kills one, which means she's terrified of hunting.
- Central Theme: Stories, and whether they are necessary or distort people's perceptions and become self-fulfilling prophecies trapping people in their fates.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Larka and Kar, who grow up in the same pack together and are part of the trio with Fell when they are younger. While Larka's feelings grow into romance, Kar is never shown to think romantically of Larka, notably after reuniting with the pack after his ordeal he now thinks of Huttser and Palla as his parents and Fell as his brother, though he is never explicitly said to think the same way about Larka as well.
- Cool Old Lady: Brassa is an old but still competent and respected member of the main pack.
- Constantly Curious: Larka, when she is younger, is always asking questions about the world. This grows into a generally philosophical (if a bit angsty about it) disposition as she gets older.
- Create Your Own Villain: Morgra genuinely wanted to be let into Huttser and Palla's pack, and her rejection pushed her fully into evil.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Slavka threatens it for whoever wins Huttser and Palla's Involuntary Battle to the Death.
- Danger — Thin Ice: The pack has to cross a frozen river to get away from their pursuers despite being warned by Tsinga about ice Fell falls through and seemingly dies.
- Dark Magical Girl: Fell is a Rare Male Example, as a wolf with strong Psychic Powers who sides with the villain and is motivated by his deep loneliness, and who is eventually converted back to the heroes' side by Larka.
- The Day of Reckoning: There are two of them in foretold in the prophecy - first, the summoning of The Searchers in the middle of the humans' battle, and then the activation of the Vision, which, if Morgra achieves, will allow her to enslave all of the animals. Morgra succeeds in using the searchers to decimate the free wolves, but Larka hijacks the vision during the climax, stopping her from achieving the final part of her plan.
- Dead Guy Junior: First there's Fell, who is named after his grandfather. Then there's Bran the baby, who Larka names after Bran the wolf and finally Huttser and Palla's second litter.
- Death by Despair: Kipcha could have escaped from the Inevitable Waterfall like Bran did, but gave up due to fearing what her pups' lives would be like without Khaz and guilty about even briefly wanting Larka dead out of jealousy.
- The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: Brassa is implied to have cancer, though the wolves don't know what that is.
- Disney Death: Fell after seemingly drowning and Kar after seemingly being killed in a fire.
- Doing In the Wizard: After a whole book of mythological stories about the origin of wolves and humans The Vision allows the lera to see the scientific version of events.
- The Dragon: Fell becomes this for Morgra for a brief time as a secret weapon against Larka.
- Dwindling Party: Morgra curses the pack do die one by one. The curse was never real, but nearly all of the pack dies just as she predicted.
- Evil Matriarch: Invoked by Morgra even though she is infertile, because the prophecy requires a mother. She succeeds by becoming the adoptive "mother" of Fell.
- Evil Versus Evil: On one side of the Balkar/Rebel conflict is Morgra, the Big Bad, who is insane. On the other side of the conflict is Slavka, a mix of General Ripper and Well-Intentioned Extremist... who is also insane. Slavka has the chance to get better at the end. Morgra does not.
- Exact Eavesdropping: Characters often hear important pieces of information, such as details about the prophecy or Morgra's plans, while in hiding and eavesdropping on other wolves.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Wolves die in brutal ways like being impaled and getting their throats torn out.
- Fantasy Pantheon: Most notably, Tor and Fenris. There's also Sita, who is the Jesus-equivalent for the wolves, and Wolfbane, who is the equivalent of Satan.
- Going Cosmic: The plot increasingly focuses on philosophical themes in the last act, with Larka's narration commenting a lot on the purpose of life and the future of animals and humans, culminating in the final vision which shows the whole history and future of the world.
- Go Mad from the Isolation: Kar after being gradually separated by the rest of the pack and finally separated from Larka by a fire, though he gets over it.
- Green Aesop: The final vision, among other things shows the future destruction that humans will bring to the environment, with a final ambiguous message that perhaps this seemingly inevitable fate can be changed.
- Heroic BSoD: Larka experiences one after she witnesses her entire family and pack die one by one as a result of the prophecy surrounding her. And later Palla when Morgra tells her about Fell's fate.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Larka goes through with confronting Morgra on Harja despite foreseeing that she will die there.
- Also, Bran the Omega., who dies fighting wolves who intended to kill his pack.
- Identical Stranger: Larka and Slavka are noted to look exactly alike.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Larka feels this.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Khaz gets impaled in a hunting trap. And the wolves also pass by many impaled humans.
- Improbable Infant Survival: Baby Bran survives things like being alone in a huge blizzard and having wolves trying to kill him.
- Inevitable Waterfall: When the pack is crossing a river, Kipcha and Bran are swept up, and there is unsurprisingly a waterfall. Only Bran survives it.
- Involuntary Battle to the Death: Slavka forces Huttser and Palla into this as a fight to the death by threatening a Cruel and Unusual Death for the winner, to ensure they will fight to protect their "enemy".
- It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Again, Larka.
- Jerkass: Fell is this to Kar at the beginning of the book when Larka starts giving Kar attention.
- Journey to Find Oneself: Fell leaves to do this at the end of the book, after escaping from being Reforged into a Minion by Morgra. This also acts as a Sequel Hook.
- Living Memory: The Searchers in the Red Meadow are this - they are not actually dead wolves but manifestations of the memories of the living. This allows Fell to be among them, despite not being actually dead.
- Lovable Coward: Kar starts out as this.
- And then there's Bran the Omega.
- Mentor Occupational Hazard: Brassa, Tsinga and Tsarr end up dead by the end of the story. Averted with Skart, who survives until the end of the book.
- Mercy Kill: Huttser and Palla go along with spoiler:trying to kill each other at Slavka's command to spare the other the fate of winning and facing a far worse death.
- Messianic Archetype: Sita is the Jesus-equivalent of the wolves' stories, the daughter of one of their gods who was killed for the message she spread. Larka is fascinated by the story and has a martyr complex herself in trying to emulate it, which culminates in the climax when Larka considers not saving herself when she has the chance so her story will have meaning for the other wolves the way Sita's did. She decides she doesn't want to die just a second too late.
- Mythology Gag: Several Shout Outs to Fire Bringer, since they are set in the same universe. Rannoch is mentioned as having the Sight, and the varg word Lera was also used in Fire Bringer.
- Noble Wolf: Unsurprisingly, there are many of these.
- Politically Incorrect Hero: Skart has a strong prejudice against ravens, which Larka calls him out on.
- Posthumous Sibling: Huttser and Paula have new children in the epilogue after Larka's death.
- Power Trio: Larka, Kar, and Fell form one, at least at first, with the three spending time together and making a promise that links them together.
- Plot Armor: Normally very much averted, but notably played straight at the climax of Part 2, where nearly all of the Free Wolves are killed by the Searchers or humans, but all of the named characters somehow survive.
- The Promise: Larka, Kar, and a grudging Fell formed one when they were younger, calling it "the Pact". As the end of the book comes, Kar is the one who holds onto this promise the strongest.
- Prophecies Rhyme All the Time: The prophecy in this book is this.
- Prophecy Twist: A rare example that works in the heroes' favor: the prophecy does not say that none shall be free, just rhetorically asked who shall be free.
- Raised by Wolves: Bran, literally.
- Rebel Leader: Slavka leads the Balkar, a huge group of rebels fighting against Morgra.
- Rescued from the Underworld: Sort of. Larka hadn't died when she made the trip to the Red Meadow. Kar ends up rescuing her by calling her name over and over when the dead tried keeping her there permanently.
- Sanity Slippage: Kar after he survives the fire. He gets better though, when Skop lives with him until his death from an infected wound.
- Shout-Out: Skart briefly mentions Rannoch from Fire Bringer."There is an old story of a Herla, a red deer, who learnt how to do it. His name was Rannoch and he lived on an island to the north-west."
- Somewhere, a Mammalogist Is Crying: The author often attributes feline traits to the wolves - they are described as having retractile claws, and using their paws as cats do, to swipe at each other or grab at prey (real wolves have non-retractile claws, which are not used for hunting or fighting with). The packs also contain numerous unrelated wolves, and Kipcha somehow becomes pregnant outside the breeding season (when neither females nor males are fertile).
- Spoiler Title: Fell dies a few chapters into the book, but having a sequel named after him might tip off a few people about his fate.
- Start of Darkness: For Morgra, it was being accused of killing a cub and subsequently being banished for it. In truth she had been trying to save it from a predatory fox, and bit the cub's scruff too hard, accidentally killing it.
- Stupid Sacrifice: One where it is left ambiguous if it truly was stupid or was necessary in the end. Larka is resigned to her fate after having a vision of her death when the prophecy is fulfilled, but she realizes right before the bridge she and Morgra are standing on is about to collapse that she does have a chance of changing the future. She debates with herself about whether she still needs to die, and ultimately decides to jump to safety, but just barely misses.
- Storming the Castle: Harja, the citadel where the climax happens.
- Survival Through Self-Sacrifice: After Larka defeats and pins down Gart in a fight, Gary decides to Face Death with Dignity, and Larka so respects him for this and how ultimately heroic he is, despite his cruel methods, that she spares his life.
- Take It to the Bridge: Larka and Morgra confront each other on the bridge in Harja which collapses and kills them both.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: Morgra didn't ever intend to kill a cub, but her being accused of this crime leads to her doing far worse.
- Title Drop Chapter: The third to last chapter is called "The Sight".
- Those Two Girls: Keeka and Karma.
- Vision Quest: Larka has to travel this way to the Red Meaadow in order to make the Searchers leave and get plot-relevant information.
- Wham Episode: Of the chapters, "Ice", "The Searchers", "Harja" and "Past and Future" stand out.
- What Cliffhanger: One chapter ends with Larka being shocked at seeing Wolfbane in person. It's only at the beginning of the next chapter where we find out it's because he's her brother who she thought was dead.
- White Wolves Are Special: As a white wolf, and a heroine, Larka represents light, hope and kindness in a dark world. She is one of the few with the power of the Sight, and while she shares the "chosen one" role with the rest of her family, with only one line in the prophecy about her that's just there to predict her birth will coincide with the human child's, she still plays a very important role in how things turn out and is the one to trigger the Vision in the climax.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Larka knows this, too. Doesn't stop her from having a lot of angst about it, though. Later subverted when Larka learns that fate can be changed with difficulty in the Red Meadow, meaning she isn't doomed to die after all. In the end, she remembers that just a second too late, with it being left ambiguous whether she could have survived if she hadn't become trapped in the story of Sita and wanted to be a martyr or if fate is really that hard to change.
