Title: The Wolf Den Series: Wolf Den Trilogy #1
Author: Elodie Harper
Published: May 13, 2021
Genre(s): Historical Fiction
Page Count: 488
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Amara was once a beloved daughter, until her father's death plunged her family into penury. Now she is a slave in Pompeii's infamous brothel, owned by a man she despises. Sharp, clever and resourceful, Amara is forced to hide her talents. For as a she-wolf, her only value lies in the desire she can stir in others.
But Amara's spirit is far from broken.
By day, she walks the streets with her fellow she-wolves, finding comfort in the laughter and dreams they share. For the streets of Pompeii are alive with opportunity. Out here, even the lowest slave can secure a reversal in fortune. Amara has learnt that everything in this city has its price. But how much is her freedom going to cost her?
Elodie Harper’s The Wolf Den perfectly exemplifies what I look for in historical fiction: stories about women set in “lesser known” historical periods, with an eye towards research and a strong grasp of human interactions. This books is well-written, insightful, and fascinating, perfect for readers who love Ancient Rome but would like to wander a bit further afield than the Capitoline Hill and the emperors’ inner circle.
This is the story of Amara, a sex worker in Pompeii’s lupanar. Raised as a doctor’s daughter in Greece, she was sold as a slave by her mother when the family fortunes took a downturn. Now she belongs to Felix, a cunning yet cruel pimp-cum-loan shark, and works alongside Felix’s other four women, “fishing” for men day in and day out. All of the whores dream of buying their freedom, but the tiny commission Felix allows them is barely enough to for food and lamp oil.
On its face, The Wolf Den seems to advertise a very grim story—a familiar and timeless tale of women being abused and used for the benefit of men. (A story that, honestly, nobody needs to read, because our history books are already full of that shit.) And to be fair, Harper does not paint a particularly bright picture of Amara or her friends’ day-to-day lives. These are not women who became sex workers by choice, and they have almost no agency with respect to…well, anything. Regardless, Harper is able to make this a very human story in the way that the focus of the narrative is almost always on the relationships between Felix’s five whores. Amara, Dido, Victoria, Cressa, and Beronice are the heart of this book—rivals for money and attention, but ultimately sisters bonded by a very specific shared experience.
Beyond that, I think that Amara herself is a very interesting character (and incredibly well-written). At the beginning, she has only recently been brought to Pompeii, and she’s still shell-shocked by the abrupt change in her circumstances. Over time, she becomes a survivor. Yet to do so, Amara becomes hardened and calculating, learning from her master Felix how to manipulate and harden her emotions. She leaves behind those who are too tied to scruples or soft feelings, which is entirely understandable, but the end result is also that she loses those who might have been kind to her. In spite of her sometimes brutal actions, Amara thrives where her more conscientious peers do not. I love character arcs like this, especially when done well. (It’s the reason I love Gone with the Wind even as I struggle with the hideous racism: Scarlett O’Hara takes care of herself by any means necessary.) Throughout The Wolf Den, Harper does a great job in subtly showing the shift in Amara’s personality as she becomes more jaded and desperate to leave Felix’s brothel, as her actions become more and more extreme. This is 100% a book where I would defend the “unlikable” heroine to the death.
Another thing to note is that in writing The Wolf Den, Harper chose to use a more “modern” idiom than one might expect from a book set during the early Roman Empire. Words like “sexy” and “girlfriend,” etc. are peppered throughout the dialogue, and I imagine that could be jarring for readers who expect all historical characters to speak in Old Timey Dialect. For myself, I appreciated how the author’s language choice signaled the casual nature of the setting. It reminded me of Lindsey Davis’ Marcus Didius Falco books, which also take place during the reign of Vespasian and are written in an even more colloquial style.
Altogether, this book met and exceeded expectations. A novel about Pompeiian prostitutes is exactly why I take the time to weed through the overwhelming number of “white woman defying Nazis” novels that permeate the genre. The Wolf Den is smart, well-researched, and displays a complex understanding of human nature and how different people react and adapt to adversity. A really, really solid read.
