Spice & Wolf

'Strike while the iron is hot.'. This is a phrase used commonly in sales, often to encourage the immediate use of one's coin. Like this very coin, word is too passed down from one soul to another, and shall begin an eternal cycle of circulation and surely endure countless recalls-- wherein it will find itself being cast absentmindedly into the gaping maw of conversation. Words possess more weight than even all the coins in the world could hope to compare to, and the stories they unite together to form are powerful, binding things that even spells and swords cannot hope to pierce. 'Spice and Wolf' weaves spoken word, legend, love, trade, and tragedy together to touch the soul in such a way that can only be described as heartwrenching.

With the first volume released (shockingly) in the noble year of 2006, series' author Isuna Hasekura delivers unto readers a story that feels almost legendary in its composition, as if the pages should be made from freshly cut and traded birch and bound tightly with leather. A traveling merchant finds himself face to face with a goddess of the harvest, and the two set out for the north together-- a story fit perfectly to be told among patrons at some medieval bar with the scents of cheap wine fresh on their breaths. This should speak volumes to the quality of its composition by way of comparison, though if that's not enough to sell you on it then you're worth your salt. In this book we, as readers, come to understand trade and bargaining as explained through countless witty exchanges and deals between our main characters and the merchants they come to know. In any other case, you'd be right to find this sort of thing being unbearable, with such things as trade and commerce being eye-rollers at a first glance; yet where many other novels would seek to spin you long-winded tales about a land's magic and its large catalogue of spells to sell you on its world that way, 'Spice and Wolf' does so with appraisal, bargaining, and contracts. A merchant's incantation invokes sale, and these words fall upon the eager buyer's open ears. Speaking at a wider scale to the above claim, I feel that this story in particular manages to make footholds of the places where many a fantasy book falter. The genre has become oversaturated with enough conflated, grandiose, and thin stories that leave little of the world to be imagined: often explaining needlessly in places where imagination cannot reach because the world is too static.

Beyond the exterior of an amazing composition lies a deeper story about the love and closeness that one can feel with another, as well as the heartbreak and turmoil of losing them. Everyone has 'that person'. Someone you perhaps let get away, someone you had to let go of or separate from for one reason or another, and in those moments of loss where waves of despair wash over oneself like the coming tide, what primal, selfish feelings we display is nothing short of ghoulish to an outside party. As humans, we are greedy creatures who lust only for more: more time, more money, more daylight-- This book has undoubtedly taught me this and so, so much more with its shades of mystery contrasting perfectly its taste for a palette of action and drama. As a reader, it's not often that you find a body of work that seems to beg you to cry out into the night, to feverishly ask you to shout out and tear at your vocal cords, so when you're met with this fleeting feeling it's up to you to chase it. Truly a book like no other, with a story and characters to match. Recommended for anyone, no matter the age or familiarity with books.