A Companion to Wolves, by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
This novel is a very, very pointed response to the entire genre of animal companion fantasies, and Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern in particular. But before I get to that, and its arguments about gender, power, and sex, let me orient you in the world.
I phrase it that way because Monette and Bear evoke the setting very concretely, which is a good thing in general, but (I think) very necessary for a such resolutely physical, gritty setting as this one. The world of the Iskryne borrows wholesale from the pagan Germanic cultural sphere; it comes across as more Norse than anything, but there are elements of Anglo-Saxon England, Germany, and so on. This is a northern world, a place of fleeting summers and long, grinding winters, where skis and snowshoes are familiar tools, and staying warm is something that requires real effort.
As is staying alive. Every winter, trolls come down out of the mountains and raid human settlements, and the wolfcarls fight them. Enter the Fuzzy Animal Companions: truly enormous wolves, telepathically bonded to the men of the wolfhealls. They may be furry, but they are not, to borrow a phrase from Marissa Lingen, varm fuzzy nice nice. I'm more of a cat person, so not exactly an expert on canine behavior, but I will say that the personalities of the wolves came across as very believable; they are definitely not just humans in fur. (Which is one place that many animal companion fantasies fall short.) And they have their politics, too, which don't get settled in the manner of human politics, however much they may choose to hang out with men.
Men only, and here's where we get into the ideological meat. As Bear has stated elsewhere, this is a society where the replacement rate is barely keeping up with the attrition rate; in less scientific terms, they're barely having enough babies to make up for all the guys who get killed. Which means women have got to have babies, and not go out into battle with the trolls, where men in peak physical condition and training regularly get their brains smashed into pudding. This does not, however, mean you don't get any prominent female characters; on the contrary, I think humans are the only society in this novel that have a patriarchal structure. Their companions, for example, are led by konigenwolves -- queen wolves -- and though Monette and Bear don't render the telepathic connection as human speech, if you think Vigdis and Viradechtis aren't major and fascinating characters, you need to pay better attention.
But the wolves, male and female, follower wolf and konigenwolf alike, all bond with men. And, according the conventions of the telepathic animal companion fantasy, when the female wolves go into heat . . . this is the stuff McCaffrey glossed over, with her (male) riders of green (female) dragons. If greens go into heat a lot and let themselves get caught by lots of different dragons, then what this translates into -- if you stop to think about it -- is the regular gang rape of green riders. But the real kicker, the extra step many people never think about, is that you shouldn't just flinch for the men. If it isn't okay for them to be forced into telepathically-mediated nonconsensual sex, why is it okay -- even wonderful -- to have the same scenes for the women who ride the queen dragons? ("The queens only take one partner" is not an acceptable answer. "McCaffrey made sure Mnementh got Ramoth so Lessa could sleep with F'lar" is also not acceptable. What if it had been R'gul?)
Enter Isolfr, formerly Njall, the eldest son of a jarl (lord), who volunteers himself to be tithed to the wolfheall and ends up bonded to a konigenwolf, Viradechtis. He isn't gay, though some of the wolfcarls are. He just wants to protect his people. The narrative has plenty of exciting plot, but a goodly chunk of it happens almost offstage, because the center of this story is as much (or more) about Isolfr getting over some mild homophobia and then figuring out how to survive being bonded to a konigenwolf. "Survive" is a word I choose advisedly: when an open mating happens, it isn't pretty. At those moments, the wolf society of the heall is calling the shots; their human brethren are just dragged along for the ride whether they like it or not. And what's good for wolves isn't necessarily good for men -- a fact that Viradechtis has a hard time wrapping her mind around.
There's more to it than just loads and loads of gay sex, though. The human society of a wolfheall is run by the brother (partner) of the wolf who most recently got the queen, a la the Weyrleaders in the Pern books. The wolves are run by the konigenwolf, however, and her brother has his own role; as wolfsprechend, his job is to be a mediator and a peacekeeper, to defuse conflicts that could threaten the stability of the heall. Which is generally a feminine role, and so continues on a more subtle level the gender-critique this book is carrying out. Isolfr goes into battle sometimes, and I actually wish his big exciting triumph had been a little less about fighting, but many of his important achievements in this book are about interpersonal mediation, and more generally dealing with himself as a feminine object. So if you find yourself fretting that all the Important Stuff is happening offstage, again -- try paying closer attention. The battles are not the important stuff.
A few touches of more overt feminism do appear. Near the end of the book, Isolfr reflects on it directly: "[He] thought of Thorlot, who might be a better blacksmith than her father or brother or dead husband, or than her son would be, but who would never be anything more than wife, sister, daughter, mother." His own position, and some of the things he's seen, give him more perspective on the matter than most of his society. But on the whole, this is a book that makes you think about the questions by giving you quiet examples without flashing neon signs; it is rarely preachy. Which means that for some, the points will slip by unnoticed. But for the rest . . . you'll think very differently about animal companions and gender in fantasy from here on out.