I have two variations of the same book that I've been working on for a while but stalled after finishing Nanowrimo in April. I can't figure out which one I like more or has the more compelling story. It's called Firstdark, and follows the journey of a half-dire, half-gray wolf during the mid to late Pleistocene Epoch.
First one: The book begins with an adult male named Tavrin, who despite it not being his place, sired a forbidden litter with a gray wolf female that strayed onto the territory the prior winter. He forsook it, seeking only to be loyal to the pack and please the patriarch. Later on, in early spring, the pack finds that she wolf was attempting to cross their territory and when he arrives she's already been done away with and most of the pups as well. He discovers, however, that she hid the last cub in a hollow tree trunk, and he can't bring himself to do away with it. When the patriarch discovers this, he uses a debt from the past to ensure he may raise the pup with the pack.
Second variation: Same gist, the MC is half-gray half-dire. It begins with her awakening on the edge of a river gorge with a head wound from the fall and memory loss. Upon finding a pack member in the area, he takes her back to the others, and in bits of pieces finds that not everything is at it seems and that her fall may not have been an accident. The motives remain unclear to her, but she becomes increasingly sure it has something to do with the patriarch's hate for the "new" kind (gray wolves), and on top of that his fear of a strange new enemy from the frozen lands of the north are driving him to lead his pack to dangerous, unfamiliar territories in order to escape.
I can't decide
I like how I began the first one, it was nicely paced and introduced the main characters well, but I like the aura of the second. Her loss of memory means no time wasted on meaningful but LENGTHY events in the past, and it makes this ice age world feel more threatening to the reader because it feels so unknown from her POV until she fully recovers.
