Die 16-jährige Blanka kommt mit einem Stipendium auf das berühmte Europa-Internat. Als sie bei einer nächtlichen Mutprobe der "Wölfe", einem Geheimbund älterer Schüler, die Leiche einer Frau findet, beginnt für sie ein Albtraum. Denn Blanka glaubt nicht an einen Unfall. Sie stellt Nachforschungen an, die sie schon bald in die Vergangenheit der Schule führen. Doch keiner will ihr glauben oder gar helfen, stattdessen schlägt ihr überall Misstrauen und Hass entgegen. Vor allem die "Wölfe" machen ihr das Leben schwer ...
Nina Blazon was born in Slovenia (the former Yugoslavia) in 1969. As a child growing up in the Bavarian town of Neu-Ulm, Nina enjoyed exploring the "forbidden" woods in search of dinosaurs, werewolves, and "monster deer" with the other children in town.
Given her taste for adventure and strange creatures, it is no surprise that Nina's favorite childhood books include the works of Astrid Lindgren (Pippi Longstocking) and The Neverending Story by Michael Ende. These books served as an inspiration to Nina as she began writing poetry and stage plays at the age of 13.
Despite a lack of encouragement from her parents, Nina pursued a work placement in journalism and began to further develop her craft. She credits the books of Theodore Sturgen as a major influence on her writing, and lives by her own advice of "Never forget your notebook!" as she often finds herself inspired by ordinary people doing everyday things.
In her novel The Pact of the Wolves (Spring 2008), Nina explores her fascination with secret societies, which she supplements with historic facts from a 17th-century German witch trial--two dark, mysterious topics that create an eerie backdrop for her cast of spellbinding characters.
Today Nina Blazon lives with her husband in Stuttgart, Germany--80 kilometers (50 miles) from the Black Forest. She enjoys traveling through Scandinavia, history, cinema, riding, and--undoubtedly--exploring the woods in search of dark creatures and bone-chilling adventures!
In some ways this was just your average school with creepier than average bullies book. Some of the twists were predictable...but only to a degree. Everyone who was a good person of course ended up with a love interest of the opposite sex (yawn) although the romances were not allowed to hijack the plot which I appreciated.
Tropes about gender were broken or not used so one of the love interests is a short, weedy boy; the female protagonist is a genius at maths and science but can't relate her way out of a paper bag, she comes across as "arrogant" as a result. I have too seldom seen this in a female character. Her romantic connection, both romantic connections are based on something other than physical attraction (I don't really know what Blanca looks like from the story, nor do I care). Another virtue is that the book is only 211 pages of writing that is mostly to the point.
To look at the cover (a scantily clad woman without a head...yawn) you would expect just the opposite, but this is a book that takes women seriously as characters and as people of substance. The "bad guys" are also fairly evenly split between men and women and take roles based on ability not gender. There is some horrible neoliberal ideology about education at some parts of the book, but considering how that turned out for everyone I am going to assume this was a semi-deliberate critique or use of irony. The view of "charity" portrayed here is certainly quite cynical, it is a dark book, but whatever goes well for Blanka only starts to go well once she decides to connect with people and begin to trust some of them. There is also a theme throughout the book of yearning for family and friendship and some interesting questions about personhood, agency and compassion.
I think I will keep an eye out for anything else written by Nina Blazon...
Yet another recent publication that is probably getting low ratings due to being marketed to fans of Twilight et al teen paranormal romances. This is an interesting an unusual story, but do NOT pick it up expecting werewolves and make-out scenes. There are some ambiguously supernatural elements, but it is primarily a mystery.
Translated from German. Story about a girl who gets accepted into a boarding school and then becomes harrassed by the exclusive club from the school. Also becomes embroiled in a mystery when she finds a dead body in the library. Had high hopes for this book, but perhaps the translation was off. The writing was very dry and there were several flaws that made reading it less enjoyable.
This was okay. I’ve had this book for so long and I’ve never read jt until now! I think I tried starting it once back when I first got it and it didn’t stick with me. I still am not quite sure what exactly was going on at all times in the book but it was okay
Vielleicht bin ich von Nostalgie geblendet, vielleicht auch durch das Hörbuch weil es gesprochen wird von Simon Jäger, aber ich liebe dieses Buch. Nina Blazon hat einfach eine Art die Freundschaften zwischen den Hauptfiguren zu gestalten, die mich einfach immer wieder begeistert.
Wow! This book had me a little scared. When I read fiction, I get sucked in and I become the character. So all the spooky, scary or upsetting things that happened to the main character Bianca, happened to me. This is the last book that I received from Annick Press's Spring Catalogue that I hadn't yet read. I was putting it off because I was having second thoughts about if I'd like it. Now I wish I'd read it right away!
It's an average size teen novel at just over 200 pages and has a very interesting cover. As the unexplained death became like a mystery subplot, I tried to figure out what happened, as I do with every mystery novel I read. The mark of a good mystery is if I can't figure out what happened until they reveal it. This is one of those books. My ideas were so wrong!
This is one of the best YA novels I've read this year for sure.
She's apparently written lots of YA novels, but as far as I know, The Pact of the Wolves is the only one translated in English. I hope Annick Press has more translated and published!
The book has everything to be good: mystery, secret society, youth, murder, boarding school, mysterious guys, but ...
Blanka is going to go a boarding school. The building is a former convent. Inside the building there is a museum with some objects from time when the nuns were judged and sentence for witchcraft. There is a secret society at this boarding school: The Wolves who always welcomes new students. But they deal with Blanka in a different way, as if they did not wanted her to stay at school.
On her first day, returning at night to her dormitory, Blanka enconters a body of a dead woman near the stairs. Then all the mystery begins, was it an accident or a murder?
Blanka and Nicholas begin to follow clues to find out who the woman was and who the Wolves are and why they do not want them around. But Nicholas has kept many secrets that he does not want to tell to Blanka.
The Pact of the Wolves by Nina Blazon but translated by Sue Innes is gripping tale about sorcery and secret society called The Wolves.Can Bianca trust anyone and what is the secret society really after? I love how this murder mystery has a gothic twist with sorcery,torture and a secret society thrown in. This book will haunt you till you finish because it`s so good that you won`t want to put it down. I reccomend this to people who enjoy reading gothic sort of novels or murder mysteries.
I wanted to like this more. One, it's a book in translation and I enjoy reading things from other cultures. Two, it's got something going on with a wolf-thing that you have to read to the end to see what's going on. Except when I got there everything went up in smoke and I didn't really know what was going on. That's annoying.
On an afternoon after I'd exhausted myself ripping wild grapevines out of my garden, this book was a welcome escape. I fell into the story and stayed there right through supper, bathtime, and bedtime. I was expecting a cheesy teenage love subplot, but instead there's a gothic mystery, complete with mysterious hauntings, fear, and misdirection. Great fun.
This book was so all over the place. I don't know if it is because it was translated from German or if it was the writing. The book didn't get interesting until 2/3 through. The main character had so many issues and kept snapping at everyone for no reason. I do not recommend this book. The time spent reading it will never come back.
one of my all-time favorites and even I have a paperback version it still looks new, even after several readings, bc it's one of my treasured books. Often read it when I need something to feel home and safe. I just love the setting and the characters, especially Blanka! I feel a connection to her! sadly the book is super underrated and barely known
A very intense book with a fantastic concept and well-paced plot line. My problems with it were that the language was a little too childish and unimaginative for my liking, and that there were one or two loose ends that never got tied up.
I really wanted to like this book more but I think something was lost in the translation for me. I had a hard time fully connecting with the characters.
Clearly something got let in translation. The dialogue was way too forced and I really didn't understand the point of the story. Disappointing, to say the least.