The Wolven Series: Judging Books by Their Covers

Marketing is an essential skills that you need to sell something. For books, the art of selling lies on how the cover of the book looks like, since especially the art of reading is fast disappearing. Such is the case of the Wolven series book that I had bought from the Big Bad Wolf book fair last year.

The cover of the books had been grabbing my attention that I had bought all the series in books. There is these changing photos of the boy turning into wolf as the covers. I admit that it is a bit corny but I love it. Even though at this point it is clear that the series are meant for young kids.....

Slowly... wait for it...... Jajan!!!

In the first book Wolven, we will be introduced to Nat Carter - a boy that supposedly want to take home a dog as his own. As it turns out, when his grandad and himself went to fetch the dog from the farm, he got himself a strange and smelly mutt instead.

Slowly when his relationship with the dog, Woody becoming closer, he found out that his dog is a descendant of a noble wolf shape shifter known as Wolven. Then Nat discovers Woody had escaped from a top secret science project. And they want him back. Not surprisingly, since this a kid's tale, 'they' are not the good guys.

Slowly.... wait for it.... Tara!!!!

When their adventure entered the 2nd book Wolven: The Twilight Circus, the story seems to be more exciting. Nat also got some of the shape shifting ability after receiving blood transfer from Woody when he was badly injured at the end of book #1. There are some hilarious things happens when he tried to turn in the first time.

To hide from the remains of the secret organization, both of them joined the Twilight Circus of Illusion troupe. Instead of a smooth sailing for both of them, this time their adversary is worse. It was an ancient evil black widow vampire.

I bought the first 2 books at the Big Bad Wolf at dirt cheap prize. I found that the 1st book was lame, but the 2nd book was interesting enough for me to buy the 3rd book from Kinokuniya at normal prize which is almost 2 times the amount that I had pay for the combined earlier 2 books. I hope to find the same theme with the earlier books and disappointed when it was a normal cover.

Boring dow!

To compound my disappointment, I found that the 3rd book failed to get as exciting as the 2nd book.

In the 3rd series Wolven: Bad Wolf Rising, Nat and Woody found that their arch nemesis still alive. Worse, he is recruiting new werewolves as his pack to hunt both of them. Not much of a challenge that I found in the last installment of the Wolven series which is a let down. Maybe for the kids between 10 to 12 will enjoy this last book and this series as a whole but I think I'm too old for this.

This experience should teach me never to judge a book by its cover. But I don't think I'll ever learn. Even when Iqbal saw the books for the 1st time, he said, "Cool man..."

Alhamdullilah.