I almost DNF'd this book halfway through. The wolves element is odd to me; apparently this is an alternate history? But they're not really a huge factor, and the idea that this isn't the real world only comes into the story faintly to show things to be conveniently different for story telling purposes, not to make any real difference to the tale. Children in grave danger and people lying to make things horrible for someone else are two things I really don't enjoy in a narrative, so at the halfway point, when the story wasn't grabbing me and the tension was too much to make listening enjoyable, I read a summary of the book. Once I learned that things would come out okay, I was able to enjoy the story and the tension soon started to resolve. I enjoyed the last half of the book quite a bit.