A powerful first outing for Jon Drago
- Steel Wolf by Christoph John
Book one in the Jon Drago series
This powerful book opened my eyes to the plight of young girls caught up in the sex industry. As such, I did find parts of the novel upsetting and difficult to read (this isn’t a complaint but an observation). The author also, very cleverly I thought, achieved a view from both sides: as well as describing, in first-hand, the horror of the abuse wrought on the young girls in the story, he also showed the view from an unknowing, almost innocent male’s perspective, with the protagonist’s lust for these young bodies and the erotica deftly penned. The sexual scenes, so often ill-judged by authors, are here written masterfully, in fact. The abuse of children within the sex trade is a sensitive, difficult subject to broach and yet it is handled confidently by the author.
Author, Christoph John
The overall quality of the writing is very good, the description is generous and there is often a poetic element to the descriptive passages, most notably towards the beginning, which I enjoyed. Characters are fully-formed, dialogue is crisp and the author draws on a broad vocabulary and produces some nice metaphors along the way too. The pacing is fairly sustained and the plot itself runs along smoothly. The final scene is taught and extremely well realised. Overall, this is an absorbing read, inhabited by believable characters brought to life by good writing but it’s also much more than that alone. The book shines a beacon on the obscenity of children being forced into prostitution and it also confronts head-on the damaging fallout which can be wreaked by an overpowering male lust.