I have mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, it had everything I would expect in a werewolf book. The family drama. The love interest. The realization of the truth. The community’s hunt for the werewolf (even with torches ablaze). That touching moment where we see that the animal side of the critter still has that memory of its human form (of course stemming from the aforementioned love interest). The capture. The continuation.
All stuff that great werelit is made of.
But that’s my problem. This felt like a classic tale retold. That’s fine and everything. It just makes for a boring story. I wanted some neat twist or some new perspective. I was bored.
The werewolf was a werewolf. Plain and simple. The transformation was as expected, and I didn’t expect anything new there. It will happen at the full moon. There will be a change in bone structure, muscle mass, skin and hair, etc. I don’t know or understand the physiology or anatomy of all that. And that’s okay. I don’t need to. I just know that it is going to happen and I do not expect this to be the part of the werewolf story that is changed. It just felt like nothing else was changed either.
What added to my overall dislike of this novel was that the story was so slow. It felt like there was more thinking and talking and brooding than action. The characters thought and talked, and then thought and talked again. It was a cycle of thinking, talking, brooding. Oh my. Some murder and death and hunting were sprinkled in every now and then. When we did get to the action scenes with the werewolf, there was very little that came across as original. It was big and strong and impossibly difficult to defeat.
Speaking of the impossible…I am going to stray from the monster talk for a moment because I have something else to add. Did anyone else notice how often the words “impossible” or “impossibly” were used? He impossibly used those words an impossible number of times. It drove me crazy. Every time I saw that word, it threw me out of the story. I started to focus on the words and not the story.
The whole time I was reading this, I just felt like I was waiting for something (I don’t know what exactly) that never happened. I’m sure this added to how slow it felt. I knew the setting was not going to be modernized at all. I was fine with that. But I wanted something to stand out. And I kept waiting and waiting and waiting. I never got to the point were I felt that I found that part of the story that was cool because it stood out from other werewolf stories. I also never really felt like I liked any of the characters. That was just one more thing that kept me distanced from the story.
I have to agree that none of the characters was particularly likable in this book. I could have liked Gwen, I think, if anyone had bothered to motivate her behavior. I never could tell whether her love for Lawrence's brother was bogus, or whether her lust for Lawrence was. But I never could buy that she felt both emotions genuinely. I know this could have been sold properly, but it was as if no one thought it important to do so. She was just a prop, a device. That meant that she could never be the true heroine I felt she had the potential to be. When she finally kills The Wolfman, I wanted to applaud her courage, but it was really too little, too late. My emotions had left the building.
ReplyDeleteI had the same feelings about the book dragging along and waiting for that something different to happen. I liked the discovery of his mothers death and the way Sir John became a werewolf. That was it. Some of the fight scenes with the werewolf were a bit off. And the last one with the father and son was ridiculous. All I could think of were the old Japanese monster movies with the two creatures battling in the end and nothing killed or majorly injured either of them. It was a hyped up ending to a drawn out story. I hope Patient Zero is better.
ReplyDeleteYou echoed my sentiments almost to a tee. I was waiting for a twist as well, even though, deep down, I knew there wouldn't be one. I was actually hoping that Lawrence's mother would have been the werewolf in the family - now that could have been interesting.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, the word impossible was used a lot. In my own post, the quotes I used to show the similarities between Lawrence and Aberline both used the word. I think by making the reactions so similar, at least using similar words, made the characters too much the same.
-Lori