“Inspirations and Influences” is a series of articles in which we invite authors to write guest posts talking about their…well, Inspirations and Influences. The cool thing is that the writers are given free reign so they can go wild and write about anything they want. It can be about their new book, series or about their career as a whole.

Today’s guest is Fantasy Author M D Lachlan – the pen name for the author and journalist Mark Barrowcliffe. His first Fantasy novel, Wolfsangel, a tale that combines Norse Mythology, Vikings and the myth of the werewolf, is being published by Gollancz this month. To celebrate its release, we invited the author to talk about the ideas behind the book.

Please give it up for M D Lachlan!

It’s a bit strange to talk of inspiration just because I’m not entirely clear how it works for me. I’m sure there are some people in the arts (Noel Gallagher, for instance) who see or hear something they like and think ‘I’d like to do something just like that’ and do. That’s actually an under-rated talent and one that can produce some great work. It’s also a good thing to do for people who are starting off. The poet Philip Larkin wrote his first works with a book of WB Yeats open on the table in front of him. It taught him the fundamentals of poetry, which enabled him to go on and find his own voice.

I don’t work like that, not from any high-minded principle but just because I don’t think I could do it very well. Some people can take a top thriller, virtually copy it, and produce a convincing top thriller. They then buy their house in the Bahamas and continue writing from there. I’m not so lucky. For some reason I just can’t do that and I know I can’t because I’ve tried.

So I’m pretty much stuck with originality, whether I like it or not. That sounds like a statement full of lightly veneered hubris but I genuinely think that originality is an unhealthy aim in any art form. I’m pleased that I’ve done something people consider original but my aim was to produce a bog standard fantasy story. My failure to do so was, luckily, a failure people seem to like.

Originality seems to have replaced beauty, truth or just entertainment as the yardstick by which the arts are judged. You can see why. It’s easier to say if something’s new, rather than if it’s any good. This, I fear, has been the curse of conceptual art. I don’t say there’s no good conceptual art, just that there’s an awful lot of bad stuff that people hesitate to condemn because it appears to be original.

I think we should be suspicious of originality. The reason something may not have been done before might be because it’s inherently rubbish. If something’s never been seen in human history, the likelihood is it’s been considered and dismissed at some point in the past and for good reason. However, as a writer, sometimes you do come up with something that you consider new and worth showing to other people. This was the case for me with Wolfsangel – a book that surprised me when I wrote it because things buried deep in my mind seemed to come bubbling to the surface, seize the fantasy novel I thought I was writing by the throat and drag it down, like Grendel, into the mire.

Wolfsangel is a historical fantasy, set in the Viking period and containing various supernatural elements – witches, werewolves and Norse gods. Just a warning, there are some mild spoilers, to do with the theme of the book below. I don’t give away plot but if you want to read Wolfsangel totally unsullied by explanation then you might want to look away now.

I don’t think I was inspired by any one thing to write this book. It’s more that certain things I’ve read and watched on TV have created a sort of mental microclimate into which I step every time I sit down write the book. If you think that’s a pretentious statement, try the next one. If the book is a landscape, these are the things that rained on it, blew on it and scraped across it to form it. I know that seems a pompous description but it seems about right.

Inspiration comes from the fact that I love dark fantasy. By this I don’t mean fantasy with dark characters – evil or psychopathic characters don’t really interest me as a writer – but something where the protagonists seem to be up against strange and unknowable forces. When I say I don’t want to write about evil characters – I like bad people in my books but I like you to know why they’re bad. One person’s evil is another’s unsentimental self interest.

TV obviously had an enormous effect on people of my generation and no more so than Children of the Stones – a tea time series in the 1970s. I could tell you all about it but it’s better to just listen to the theme tune (not the HTV bit, which comes first, clearly) Kids today would need counselling if you stuck this on a TV programme. It’s about ancient supernatural forces impacting on modern life – not too dissimilar from the theme of Wolfsangel. It also contains the idea of ancient stories playing out in the modern day.A book with a similar theme is Alan Garner’s Owl Service – set in Wales with a different mythology, that of the Welsh Mabinogion. I have to say, I enjoyed the idea of this book – ancient stories playing themselves out through modern people – more than the book itself when I was a kid. I’d loved his Weirdstone of Brisingamen with a passion and The Owl Service seemed a bit subtle and dated for my tastes back then.

The film The Wicker Man has a related feel. Please, in the name of sanity, don’t confuse this slice of 1970s genius with the Nick Cage remake, for which crime I think he should be set upon by pagans and sacrificed to the darkest god available within a four hour car journey. I said at the time it had all the charm of watching a dear old friend beaten to death. The 1973 Wicker Man has a great look to it and a superb plot – it involves a staid police inspector going to investigate the disappearance of a child on a remote Scottish island. Christopher Lee, pictured, takes a great part as the lord of the island.

Without wishing to spoil the plot I will say that it’s full of surprises – one of which I have just realised is very near to a surprise that comes up in Wolfsangel. Perhaps these influences have a more direct effect than I’d thought.

Very often when I’m writing a book I’ll have a tune that comes insistently into my head. For Wolfsangel it was Psychic TV’s Thee Full Pack. I can only really find it on Spotify so I can’t post a link. It’s a semi-pretentious, very atmospheric song which could really be about Odin, the chief god of Wolfsangel. ‘He is the father of fear…ripping the line of the time.’ It also includes the sound of a dog attack, treated through some sort of synthesiser, which is very werewolf-like. I’d recommend giving a listen because it’s very interesting and doesn’t give a hoot for being commercial. The one in my head with the book I’m writing at the moment is this, which is clearly a work of sublime genius by the greatest female artist ever to draw breath – The Hounds of Love by Kate Bush.

This is what I mean by not striving for originality. I have the strong sense that she was just writing songs. They happen to be totally original and mad as a sack of badgers but that wasn’t her aim – she just wanted to write something good. I could be wrong about that, of course, but I don’t think I am.

Some things you don’t even have to see or read for them to have an effect on you. I have no memory of ever seeing the western A Man Called Horse but it seems certain that it informed my view of Sioux magic as a quest for magical insight brought on by pain rituals. I tried to check to see if this was based on actual practices but drew a blank so this must have been my source for it.

However, other rituals that certainly stuck in my head were the pain rituals and human sacrifice of the Mayans, Incas and Aztecs – with practices such as body piercing or drawing a rope of thorns through a slit in the tongue.

I had a view that the important magical aspect of the human sacrifice was the terrible and horrific effect it had on the priests. This led me to the idea that a magical reality could be accessed by shocking the conventional mind into numbness. That’s not my real view but it was an interesting one to follow for the purposes of the book.

Of course, there is no Mayan or American Indian culture in Wolfsangel. The specific inspiration for that came from The Edda – the collection of Icelandic texts that give us our picture of Norse mythology. Edda means grandmother in old Norse – indicating that the stories were old at the time they were written down.

I was particularly fascinated by the figure of The Fenris Wolf, here pictured fighting Odin, I think, though the horse seems to only have four legs and Odin’s has eight:

Here is the wolf again in a wonderful picture by the Swedish painter John Bauer. It’s taking the hand of the God Tyr in his mouth as an insurance against the gods tricking him into allowing itself to be tied with unbreakable bonds. This is among my favourite sort of fantasy art.

Unfortunately it’s a bit staid for modern publishers to put on the front of books! The story of the Fenris Wolf is rather long for this blog but interested readers can find in on Wikipedia here.There is a chilling prophetic verse concerning the death of the gods at their final day which I carried in my head throughout the writing of Wolfsangel.

‘The fetters shall burst and the wolf run free
Much do I know and more can see.’

This is a mean wolf, he eats gods.

I was also fascinated by the self sacrifice of Odin (the chief Norse god, sort of), losing his eye and hanging on a tree for nine nights to gain magical knowledge. Here is an image I like from eighteenth century Iceland of the one eyed god riding his eight legged horse Slepnir. I’ve always preferred this sort of stuff to conventional fantasy art, from Roger Dean to men in hoods.

This is a key verse from the Edda, spoken by Odin.

‘I know that I hung on a windy tree

nine long nights

wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin

myself to myself

on that tree of which no man knows

from where its roots run

No bread did they give me nor drink from a horn,

downwards I peered;

I took up the runes, screaming I took them,

then I fell back from there.’

This is a superb piece of writing that contains many of the ideas present in Wolfsangel – self sacrifice, the hanged god, and – of course – the runes, magical symbols.

The runes were a big influence on my writing an I think my interest in them stems directly from Tolkien and the mysterious writing Gandalf (this name appears in The Edda, meaning ‘magic elf’ in old Norse) carves on Bilbo’s door.

The one area where I do concede I tried to be original is where I sent my protagonists. I’d first decided to send them with the Viking fleets to Celtic Ireland but I thought the Celtic tradition had been well done by others. So I sent them north into the Sami lands, for which I had to do a lot of research. I shan’t say much about it, other than here is a Sami rune drum.

Another influence on my work is that I played Dungeons and Dragons to the point of Vitamin D deficiency when I was a kid. I loved it and would have to say that it must influence my writing. I’m not sure how, exactly, other than meaning I spent a youth with a head full of elves. However, I found its idea of magic too different to my own concept of magic.

The biggest influence on the feel of the magic in Wolfsangel comes from my early reading of books on the history of witchcraft. I used take these books to bed with me and scare myself stupid reading stories of witches vomiting pins or the excesses of the witchfinders. I think it’s the look of the illustrations I liked. Everyone has their own preferred sort of fantasy art and I think mine is woodcuts. It’s the strangeness of them that I like so much. This is the sort of book I used to read, or rather secondary texts that would contain quotes and pictures from this sort of thing.

The other magical practice – at least we assume it was a magical practice – that fascinated me as a kid was connected to the discovery of bog bodies.

These are presumed ritual sacrifices that have been preserved in peat bogs. Again, it’s the alien and strange nature of these images that appealed to me. Mire magic – you can’t really say bog in a modern novel without eliciting smirks – is a big part of Wolfsangel.

So all these things and more influenced me while I was writing Wolfsangel, or at least these were the things that I think helped form the mental climate in which the book was produced.

Thank you, Mark! And now for the giveaway:

GIVEAWAY DETAILS

The Viking King Authun leads his men on a raid against an Anglo-Saxon village. Men and women are killed indiscriminately but Authun demands that no child be touched. He is acting on prophecy. A prophecy that tells him that a child of the Gods will be found among the Saxons. If Authun takes the child and raises him as an heir, the child will lead his people to glory.

But Authun discovers not one child, but twin baby boys. Ensuring that his faithful warriors, witness to what has happened, die during the raid Athun takes the children and their mother back to Norway and the witches who live on the perilous mountain known as the Troll Wall. He places his destiny in their hands.

And so begins WOLFSANGEL, the first of a stunning multi-volume fantasy epic that will take a werewolf from his beginnings as the heir to a brutal Viking king, down through the ages. It is a journey that will see him hunt for his lost love through centuries and lives, and see the endless battle between the wolf, Odin and Loki – the eternal trickster – spill over into countless bloody conflicts from our history. This is the myth of the werewolf as it has never been told before and marks the beginning of an extraordinary new fantasy series from Gollancz.

We are giving away ONE copy of Wolfsangel to a lucky reader! Entry is simple – just leave a comment here telling us what your favorite werewolf book/movie is. The contest is open to ALL, and will run until Saturday, May 22 at 11:59 PM (PST). Only ONE comment per person, please! Multiple comments WILL be disqualified. Good luck!

Title: Claire de Lune

Author: Christine Johnson

Genre: YA/UF

Torn between two destinies?

Claire is having the perfect sixteenth birthday. Her pool party is a big success, and gorgeous Matthew keeps chatting and flirting with her as if she’s the only girl there. But that night, she discovers something that takes away all sense of normalcy: she’s a werewolf.

As Claire is initiated into the pack of female werewolves, she must deal not only with her changing identity, but also with a rogue werewolf who is putting everyone she knows in danger. Claire’s new life threatens her blossoming romance with Matthew, whose father is leading the werewolf hunt. Now burdened with a dark secret and pushing the boundaries of forbidden love, Claire is struggling to feel comfortable in either skin. With her lupine loyalty at odds with her human heart, she will make a choice that will change her forever?

Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster Children’s
Publication Date: May 18 2010/ July 1 2010
Hardcover: 256 pages/Paperback:352 pages

Stand alone or series: First in a new series

Why did I read the book: What made me want to read this book? The cover and the title (which I think is a great play with Clair de Lune). Yes, I can be shallow.

How did I get this book: I received an ARC from Simon Pulse

Review:

I will go straight to the point and summarise the book’s proposition: Claire de Lune is a book about a girl who finds out that she is a werewolf (in a world that despises and fears werewolves) and who struggles between being human and being a werewolf. I find that, as conflicts go, this one could potentially be interesting depending on how one executes it. But Claire de Lune bugged me to no end because it is a book whose main conflict stems from a very flawed, counterintuitive, inorganic premise. But I am way ahead of myself.

On her 16th birthday, Claire finds out that she is a werewolf.

Hold on. I think that sentence lacks a certain flair. Let me rephrase this:

On her 16th birthday, Claire develops a rash.

It covers her hands and ears and it itches and it itches and….no one does anything about it. Claire goes around for a few hours, scratching, hiding her hands and covering her ears and never once considers going to a doctor. She is then informed point blank by her mother, that she is a werewolf. That she belongs to a local pack.That werewolves are female only, who don’t consider themselves human – at all – whose identities MUST at all cost be kept a secret, hence why girls are only told they are werewolves a few days before their first transformation. And then they have to just deal with it. With the fact that they are not humans; that they are, what most people consider, killing machines; that they are not supposed to have lasting relationships with any humans, because they can never know they are werewolves; who in order to reproduce, must find a human partner but should not fall in love or remain too close.

Let’s take a step back for a moment and examine this premise. It just….doesn’t make ANY sense to me. It sounds, as I said before, very counterintuitive: from a biological point of view and from a cultural point of view.

With regards to the former, one of the most important biological imperatives of any species is reproduction. Correct me if I am wrong, but a female-only species does not sound like the way to go especially if you consider minor things like you know, GENES. Wouldn’t having babies ONLY with male humans be the perfect way to weaken the lycanthrope genetic signature? Granted that all I have here to guide me is my High School Biology and my love for David Attenborough. I may be wrong but this was sufficient to pull me out of the story. And don’t think I don’t appreciate the attempt at making a “girl-power” story with strong female characters who are in charge, because I do. But there’s gotta be a reasonable explanation for this.

Then there is the cultural significance. According to this specific lore, packs have existed forever, created by a Goddess and they find that the best way to be safe is to keep it all a secret. Again, correct me if I am wrong: I think the chances of someone freaking out and letting out the secret to the world are FAR greater when you are told out of the blue, that you are a creature of nightmares, that all your life to that point has been a lie, that you must break away from your friends, that you can’t have a boyfriend (unless you want to reproduce), that you must lie to everybody you know, that you can’t say “oh my God” anymore and instead you MUST say “oh my Goddess”. Wouldn’t it be simpler, safer, to grow up knowing who you are and being prepared for the transformation with more than a few weeks’ notice? But then again, if any different, there would be no cause for this book.

Because of these issues, because the resulting conflict sounds very artificial, it was extremely hard for me to carry on reading, yet I did finish the book and that is saying something. Part of what made it reasonably readable was the fact that Claire did react to these changes in an appropriate manner: railing against her mother, freaking out, considering different aspects of her new reality. I also liked her romantic relationship with a nice, wholesome boy named Matthew. It is definitely refreshing to have a paranormal romance minus the whole “falling for a dark, brooding boy who might just kill me” thing.

Unfortunately that is as positive as I can be. Even if I had no issues with the premise and world-building, the rest of the book, the characters and the plot were unremarkable.Even though Claire was sort of likable when dealing with her mother and werewolf issues, her constant whinny “why do you like me, I am not popular” mantra was tiresome. Matthew’s reply to this, is that he considers her the most interesting person he knows and yet not a single scene between them has in-depth dialogue that could actually SHOW instead of TELLING me why he thought so.

There is also a storyline in which a rogue werewolf is killing humans and public opinion is that werewolves are BAD and EVIL (led by Matthew’s father by the way, who is almost a psycho villain). Again, I ask: if the werewolves were not as secretive – I mean, the entire world already knows they exist, so what is the point? – and came out to say ”hey, we are not all evil, you know”, possibly these problems would not exist. Furthermore, the revelation of who the culprit is, doesn’t ring true, considering the heightened senses that the werewolves supposedly have. Surely one of them would have SMELLED this person since they all knew her.

Even with the overall blandness what really prevented me from enjoying the novel was its lack of intrinsic logic. I am fully aware that this might not deter other people from enjoying it but I would still say: proceed with caution. On my side, I prefer my fiction with a bit more of salt, pepper and a better rationale on the side, thank you very much.

Notable Quotes/Parts: I read the book three days ago and I can’t remember a scene I truly liked.

Verdict: Bland, uninspired YA novel based on I what consider to be a flawed premise. Regardless, this will probably appeal for those looking for “more of the same” rather than something new and unique.

Rating:4 – Bad but not without some merit

Reading Next: The Demon’s Covenant by Sarah Rees Brennan

For our next stop on Halloween Week, we have the fabulous paranormal romance/urban fantasy author Meljean Brook over for a guest post!

We are unabashed Meljean fangirls – so when we were inviting folks over for Halloween, she was one of the first names that came to mind. And, we were ecstatic when she agreed to put something together for our Halloween Celebration! Today, Meljean will be talking about Silver Bullet – the ’80s horror flick, starring Corey Haim and Gary Busey.

Without futher ado, please give it up for Meljean Brook!

Silver Bullet

Thanks to Ana and Thea for inviting me over for Halloween week! This is one of my favorite events at The Book Smugglers, so I’m thrilled to take part.

When Thea asked me what I wanted to do, the first thing that came to mind was writing a pseudo-review of Stephen King’s Silver Bullet, a 1985 werewolf movie produced by Dino De Laurentiis (Flash Gordon, Conan the Barbarian, Army of Darkness, and a bunch of other Stephen King-based movies) and directed by Daniel Attias (usually a TV director, including Buffy, Alias, House, and a gazillion other episodes of various shows.) I’d been thinking about Silver Bullet a lot lately, and how, when I was nine years old, I used to scare the crap out of myself walking home. We lived out in the boonies, and the driveway from the main road where the school bus dropped me off to our house wound through the woods (the Oregon kind, which are tons of tall fir trees surrounded by leafy underbrush that is very, very easy to hide in (I know this, because I used to hide in it and scare the crap out of my sisters and cousins when they had to walk the road at night)).

Anyway, I used to sprint down that drive in record time, certain that either a wendigo or the werewolf from Silver Bullet would leap out and kill me. Maybe I shouldn’t have watched it that young. But the truth is, there wasn’t any way I couldn’t watch it. If a movie was scary and I could sneak it past my parents, there was no holding me back.

The Basic Premise: Over the course of a summer, a werewolf terrorizes a small town in Maine (this is Stephen King, so of course it is.) One eleven-year-old boy, Marty Coslaw (played by the Corey of the Haim variety) and his sister, Jane (played by Megan Follows, best known for Anne of Green Gables) discover who the werewolf is and, with the help of their Uncle Red (Gary Busey, in what might be the perfect role), plan to kill it.

And I loved the movie. Sure, it scared the crap out of me, but I loved it. When I was 13, I read the novella it was based on – Cycle of the Werewolf by Stephen King – and aside from being intrigued by the structure of that novella, I don’t remember a single thing about it … but I remembered (quite fondly) many, many elements of the movie.

Would it hold up after twenty-three years, though? When I was nine, I didn’t make jokes about Corey Haim. When I was nine, the image of Gary Busey’s teeth weren’t yet burned in my brain. The two main characters – Marty and Uncle Red – are both played by actors whose Hollywood history and pop culture status is much, much bigger than their roles here. So, watching it now, would it just be crackalicious fun with one of the Coreys and crazy Gary Busey, but not worth watching for the movie itself?

The answer? Yes, it is crackalicious fun with Corey and Gary. And I still love it. There’s a lot that just works in this movie, and it thankfully outweighs the stuff that doesn’t.

(Everything until the end involves minor spoilers.)

The characters are hands-down the best part of this movie. Wheelchair-bound Marty is at the center of the action, and his disability plays an enormous part in the both the suspense and illuminating the other characters, yet the movie avoids making him precious, avoids making statements, or falling into any cloying sentiments that could have easily bogged down both the plot and characters.

Gary Busey just might have been made to play Uncle Red. He’s a twice-divorced alcoholic who dotes on Marty and whose sister (Marty’s mother, in a small but well-played role by Robin Groves) disapproves of his lifestyle. He’s the uncle who comes over to his sister’s house, gets drunk and plays poker with Marty, tells the naughty jokes, shouts obscenities, and builds Marty’s motorized wheelchair-bike (the Silver Bullet).

Early on, there’s this great conversation between Red and Marty’s mother, Nan, after Red has come over for one of those drinking nights. She asks him not to drink in front of Marty, Red yells at her not to boss him around (ah, those big sisters.)

NAN: Red, I don’t care how you live. But he is a very impressionable little boy.
RED: You know, you think your only responsibility is getting his butt out of the chair and into the tub and out of the chair and onto the toilet. And you oughta realize there’s more to Marty than him not being able to walk.
NAN: It’s so easy for you, isn’t it?
RED: Yeah, it is!
NAN: You blow in here once a month, and you tell a few jokes, and you have a few beers, and you want to lecture me about how to raise my son. Well, I am the one responsible for how he feels when he sees you like this, and how he feels when you leave! Red, Marty has enough strikes against him as it is—
RED: (interrupting) He doesn’t have any strikes against him!
NAN: —that I am scared to death that some day he is just going to give up.
RED: He’s not going to give up!
NAN: Well he doesn’t need you showing him how to do it!

And this is the kind of dynamic that I really love in this movie. Yes, the mother is over-protective, and yes, Red is a bad role model. But both of them are understandable and believable, and yes, both of them are right. What I also find impressive is that, despite this blowup and the echoes of it in their later conversations, Red and Nan still get along later. There’s no making either one of them into the bad guy or the good guy. And Red, whose view of Marty seems to sit somewhere in the realm between Denial and Eternal Optimism, is the one who eventually puts Marty in a position where he’s in the most danger – yet even that action isn’t ever given a ‘bad’ label (because the ‘bad’ is obviously the werewolf, no matter how recklessly-indulgent-cuz-he-loves-Marty Red can be.)

Then there’s Jane, who is perfect (and more importantly, also believable) as the sensible older sister who is resentful of the burden Marty’s disability places on her and of how much slack their mother gives Marty, but who isn’t Teh Eveeel. She forgives him when he’s a twerp without martyring herself, and apologizes when she’s been overly impatient with him. She also plays the necessary straight man against Marty and Uncle Red. Her mixture of practicality and acceptance becomes essential to the plot – as close as Uncle Red and Marty are, it is Jane who is able to convince the skeptical Uncle Red that a) Marty is in danger, and b) the killer might be more than just a psycho human.

Silver Bullet isn’t a character-driven movie, though – it’s werewolf-driven. Between the scenes where we get to know Marty and family, we get to see the werewolf killing people: the drunk railroad maintenance man who he beheads with a swipe of his paw (when I was nine, that flying head was the most awesome shot ever), the pregnant single woman who is about to kill herself.

The first two murders only touch Marty peripherally, but the third victim is his almost-girlfriend’s drunk slob of a father, and the fourth victim is Marty’s best friend (and kind of a jerk) Brady.

Are you sensing a theme about the victims here?

The small town is essentially another character in this movie, and is described at the beginning (before the terror) as “A town where people cared about each other as much as they cared about themselves.” Which is, I think, a fantastic description – it first gives the impression that everything is on-the-surface perfect, but really … how many people care about themselves and take care of themselves as well as they should?

The townspeople aren’t as nicely drawn as the Coslaw family – they definitely run more to stereotypes: The hunter at the bar with the loud mouth, the gentle giant bartender who carries a baseball bat called ‘The Peacemaker,’ the in-over-his-head but competent sheriff, and the minister who tries to comfort everyone when everything starts going apeshit and the bodies start piling up.

And this is another point where I love this movie. Horror so often takes an apparently-perfect situation and peels back the layers to reveal the rot hidden underneath: the drunks, the molestations, the secret pregnancies. Silver Bullet doesn’t do that. Those things aren’t hidden in this town; everyone knows that the first victim was a drunk, and Jane sees the pregnant woman being rejected by the father of the baby. At one of the early gatherings of the townspeople in their favorite bar, we learn that everyone knows who is behind on their taxes. This isn’t a town of secrets; it’s a town where people are just people, for good or bad, and everyone recognizes that.

So when even the ‘bad’ people in the town are shown to be normal, it highlights the werewolf’s wrongness even more. A town that has a few drunks? That’s normal. Ripping them apart? It’s unnatural.

This is another point where the movie really works: It doesn’t try to explain the werewolf. There’s no mystic force behind it, no ancient curse, we don’t know how [spoiler] became a werewolf, and it’s even suggested that he doesn’t even know how he became one.

One thing that often kills horror movies is digging too deep into the reasons WHY? and then coming up with a crappy explanation. How many times have you sat in a movie (or read a book) that, although it was going along great, suddenly became really, really stupid as soon as you found out why it was all happening?

Silver Bullet avoids that by … well, avoiding it. I imagine that some viewers will be disappointed that there’s not more explanation behind the werewolf, but it really worked for me.

Was the werewolf scary, though? … hmm, maybe not so much. Although some of the suspenseful parts where the werewolf is stalking someone out of sight were well done, Silver Bullet suffers from the same problems that many similar movies do: Once you show the monster, he’s not quite as scary. (This is also the scene that I’m talking about when I say that Uncle Red, though acting out of love, doesn’t exactly help Marty and is reckless – he gives Marty some fireworks to go shoot at night, even though there’s a mass murderer on the loose that has already killed his best friend. In romance, we call that TSTL, and I’m not sure who is dumber here: Marty or his uncle.)

There is a transformation scene, too – though not bad by 1985 standards, it’s also not An American Werewolf in London or The Howling.

Then there are a couple of missteps, and the biggest one comes right in the middle of the movie. A little humor is all well and good in horror (and I think necessary), but there is a scene after Brady has been killed when the townspeople form a mob to go after the killer. There’s some great tension between the people, the sheriff, and the boy’s father. There’s a lovely setting in the woods where the fog is thick and creeping over the ground, and visibility is low, and the townspeople realize they are being hunted beneath the fog.

And it all becomes a joke. I’ll admit I laughed out loud when the werewolf started beating the people with The Peacemaker (the bartender’s bat) because it was campy and funny … but it also throws off the tone of the movie, and it doesn’t make sense. The whole point of the werewolf is that he’s ripping people apart, he’s unnatural, he’s terrifying … he shouldn’t be funny. And yet that scene skews him in that direction. And even though it’s only for a short time, it makes everything feel off, and something that should have been horrifying (Brady’s death, and the townspeople’s mob-like reaction) is played for a laugh.

But despite that misstep, and a few other “Oh, come on!” moments, this is a fun, solid little film, perfect for Halloween (or any other time when you have friends over, and shouting OMG, IT’S ONE OF THE COREYS! seems like it might be just as entertaining as the movie itself).

Or, you know, just play this fan-made tribute to Corey Haim.

Thank you Meljean for the fabulous post! And holy crap, that Corey Haim tribute video is something else.

Title: Hunting Ground

Author: Patricia Briggs

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Publisher: Ace (US)/Orbit (UK)
Publication Date: August 2009 (US)/October 2009 (UK)
Paperback: 304 pages

Stand alone or series: The second full length novel in the Alpha & Omega series, following last year’s release of Cry Wolf, though it’s really the third entry in the series proper (the first story is a novella titled “Alpha and Omega” in the On the Prowl anthology).

Why did I read this book: It’s no surprise I adore Patricia Briggs. I’m a huge fan girl and have been since discovering her fantasy novels in middle school. Then, I discovered her new Urban Fantasy series about a coyote shapeshifter VW mechanic named Mercy, and I was hooked. And last year, I read and loved Cry Wolf, got to interview the lovely Patty Briggs in person, and…well, do you really need any more? Long story short, I was chomping at the bit to get my paws on Hunting Ground.

Summary: (from amazon.com)
Mated to werewolf Charles Cornick, the son – and enforcer – of the leader of the North American werewolves, Anna Latham now knows how dangerous being a werewolf is, especially when a werewolf opposes Charles and his father is struck down. Charles’s reputation makes him the prime suspect, and the penalty for the crime is execution. Now Anna and Charles must combine their talents to hunt down the real killer – or Charles will take the fall.

Review:

The stage is set, and the werewolves of North America are ready to come out of the supernatural closet. Bran, the Marrok, has decided that it is time to formally reveal their existence to the world just as the fae have done before them, but he wants to maintain more control over the situation than the Gray Lords managed. Thus, Bran calls a preliminary conference of the most powerful, important werewolves in the world to meet in Seattle, so that he can allay their concerns and fears, for revealing the existence of werewolves in North America means they will be “outed” everywhere. But, put a bunch of dominant Alpha wolves in a room together, and it’s a recipe for disaster. At least, that’s what Charles, Bran’s son and second in command, tells his father. Fully healed from his trying silver injuries in “Alpha and Omega” and Cry Wolf, Charles is sent to Seattle on his father’s behalf, bringing his new wife and mate, Anna – who also happens to be an extremely rare Omega wolf. With a terrifyingly powerful Gray Lord named Dana Shea (from the Daoine Sidhe) to referee the negotiations, and powerful wolves like Jean Chastel (the maneating Beast of Gevaudan) anxious to cause as much trouble and bloodshed as possible, Charles and Anna have their work cut out for them. And when kidnapping attempts and deaths occur, the stakes are dramatically raised.

While I thoroughly enjoyed “Alpha and Omega” and Cry Wolf, this spinoff series still was clearly second-bill to the Mercy Thompson books in my mind. Much more relationship-driven than Mercy’s series, the Alpha and Omega books were nice and good, but decidedly auxiliary…

Hunting Ground managed to change all that. I still love Mercy first, but with this second novel Alpha and Omega has proven its mettle as a strong standalone series in its own right.

Cry Wolf felt a lot more like a paranormal romance type novel when I first read it – decidedly less-plot heavy and more concentrated on the mate bond between the terrifyingly powerful Charles and the almost-broken Anna. Both characters had a lot of baggage, and struggled to get to know each other after their wolves had selected them as mates. In Hunting Ground, the feeling-out period is over and these two characters have grown much more comfortable and trusting of each other. I have to applaud Ms. Briggs for her ability to move the relationship forward, but still keep it in the realm of the realistic – even though Charles and Anna are mated and married, they are still strangers to each other, learning what the other’s signals are, what their fears and needs are, etc. Charles is constantly thinking about how he must be careful not to stifle Anna’s freedom, nor can he be too gruff with her lest he scares her off; Anna simultaneously tries to show Charles that she is not made of glass, that she can stand up for herself, and that she can bear some of his own emotional burden. Both characters are a lot tougher than they were in Cry Wolf, but are still fragile in the way that new relationships are. It’s a very realistic, touching thing to read – Ms. Briggs is unparalleled when it comes to writing these complicated, tentative and yet passionate relationships. The bond between a wolf and its mate is a very complicated thing that we see in the Mercy books, but it’s examined much more in depth in the Alpha and Omega books with these two protagonists. I was also thrilled to see two characters from “Seeing Eye,” the novella by Ms. Briggs in this year’s Strange Brew anthology, make an appearance as secondary characters in this novel. Moira, a scarred, blind white witch who is powerful beyond belief, and Tom, an Emerald City wolf, have been mated after their adventure together in the novella and befriend Anna and Charles here.

But even more than just the characters, Hunting Ground bests its predecessors by virtue of its storytelling. In this second novel in the series, Ms. Briggs is back to her trademark style with a tight, fast paced, impeccably written plot. Charles and Anna as growing characters and their relationship is the heart of these books, but Hunting Ground has so much more, such as the mystery of who is behind the murders and for what reason and the intoxicating power politics of dominance in the world of the wolves. The latter, especially, is fascinating to me – and it’s something that the Mercy books could never really delve into because narrator Mercy is inherently an outsider, as a walker and coyote. In Hunting Ground we learn even more about what it means to be an Alpha wolf and especially what it means to be an Omega. Anna totally, completely rocks. She may be timid because of her time in Chicago with her brutal first pack, but she is anything but weak. As she tells a new wolf she meets in Seattle, Omegas are Alphas – but they’re incredibly zen.

As for the overall mystery, well, for fear of spoilers I won’t say much other than it is fabulously written. There’s an excellent mythological twist that underlies the novel that Ms. Briggs carries out flawlessly. One thing I love about her writing is her ability to tell a story simply, without expanding into unnecessary melodrama or tedious extra pages to protract the novel, and Hunting Ground is no exception.

I loved this book. Though Mercy still holds first place in my heart, Anna and Charles have carved out a niche of their own. Highly recommended.

Notable Quotes/Parts: It’s the little things that I love about Ms. Briggs’ writing; her ability to make simplicity beautiful. For example:

His voice, when he spoke, was a lot more powerful than his frail body.

“I’m gonna sing something for you,” he told their audience — and everyone in the room looked up from their meals. It was that kind of a voice. He paused, milking it. “You’ll have to forgive me if I don’t dance anymore.” She waited until the laughter he’d invited died away before she began.

Usually, when she first played a piece with someone she didn’t know, especially if the piece was one she knew well, it was a mad scramble to make her version fit with the person’s perception of how the song should feel. But except for the very beginning, it was magic.[...]The old man’s voice was just right. It, the beaten-up piano, and Anna’s sweet self all combined in one of those rare moments when performance and music blended to make something more.[...]The old man took Anna’s hand and made her take another bow as well. he kissed her hand, then let his grandson escort him back to his table in triumph. His family rose around him, fussing and loving as they ought, while he sat as a king and took his due.

Anna pulled the protective cover over the keys and looked up and saw Charles. She hesitated, and it made his heart hurt that he’d made her afraid of him. But she lifted her chin, her eyes still full of the music, and strolled up to him.

“Thank you,” he told her, before she could say anything. He wasn’t sure if he was thanking her for leaving the room when he’d asked, for staying in the restaurant instead of leaving him, or for the music — which had reminded him that this whole thing wasn’t just about the werewolves.

It was about the humans they shared the country with, too.

You can read a full excerpt of chapters 1 & 2 online at the author’s website HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Based on the positive reaction to Mercy Thompson: Homecoming, Alpha and Omega: Cry Wolf is also being made into a comic adaptation from the Dabel Brothers (who’ve also done the comic adaptations of Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden series) this summer.

I’m not crazy about the art – Anna looks just like the crappy comic version of Anita Blake:

No? I’ll still check out an issue though.

Verdict: Much stronger than Cry Wolf, Hunting Ground is Patricia Briggs at her best. Charles and Anna’s touching story keeps getting better and better, and I cannot wait for their next book. Essential for any Briggs fan.

Rating: 8 Excellent

Reading Next: Forest Born by Shannon Hale

Title: Intertwined

Author: Gena Showalter

Genre: YA (Fantasy)

Publisher: Harlequin Teen
Publishing Date: September 1, 2009
Hardcover: 448 pages

Stand Alone or series: book 1 in a planned series

Summary: Most sixteen-year-olds have friends. Aden Stone has four human souls living inside him:

Two romances, both forbidden. Still, the four will enter a dark underworld of intrigue and danger but not everyone will come out alive…

Why did I read the book: I had seen the cover and the blurb and was dying to read it. Then, the Book Fairy (AKA Katiebabs) surprised me by sending me a copy she snatched over at BEA. Yay!

Review:

Crossroads, Oklahoma

16 year old Aden Stone is new in town, having recently being transferred to the D and M Ranch, house for wayward teens. Whilst out exploring the place, listening to his iPod, he suddenly realises that his absent-minded steps have taken him to the cemetery. Big Mistake. Zombies are coming out of their graves and what starts as a quiet walk around the town, ends up being just another dangerous day in the life of Aden – a day when he has to fight zombies, kill them, probably get hurt in the process. The usual.

Except that there is nothing usual about Aden. He is a boy with four souls trapped inside him:

Julian wakes the dead (hence the cemeteries being a no-no place to visit )

Elijah can predict the death of anyone who passed him by and sometimes the future

Eve can travel in time, often taking them to a younger version of himself which can result in dramatic changes of the present time

Caleb can force him to possess someone else’s body.

They have been inside Aden ever since he can remember and that is the problem with Aden’s life: never being able to settle down with foster families because the voices are ALWAYS there leading to the predictable result: he is constantly talking to himself and that has landed him in several mental institutions throughout this life. Now, a little bit older and mature, he is able to control his response to the voices and this has provided some stability to his life as he joins the Ranch. But the abilities he gains from these souls have a high cost: with Elijah’s power he has seen his impending death and with the clock ticking he must find a way to free these souls before they die with him.

He doesn’t know where to start though. He thinks they are trapped souls – but they may be something else. Maybe they are to go away after all, move on. Or maybe they can be transferred to dead bodies. Who knows? The only thing that he does know is that he needs peace. He needs to be alone with his own thoughts, he needs to feel normal. His loneliness is extremely poignant and a paradox, because he is never, ever alone. He shares this body with the souls in a complex, symbiotic relationship where he both wishes he was alone but maybe not, because he really does love the guys (and girl). The piercing sense of isolation is maximized by the fact that he knows he is going to die – but also because of another vision he had, that of a beautiful girl kissing him, something that he has never been able to do.

Back to the cemetery though, Aden has just dispatched the zombies when he sees her. A girl. (Maybe his girl?).Then something weird happens: a blast of sound and then nothing else – silence, no movements, time stops. Aden realises he feels peace for the first time, because this girl, can stop the voices. And then another blast of sounds, noise returns and then a gust of wind knocks them both off their feet. She runs away (and the voices return) and he follows her desperately.

The girl is called Mary Ann. A high school girl, who lives with her father after the death of her mother, in childbirth. She is very responsible and has a 15 year plan to become a psychiatrist, like her dad. When Aden follows her to this café, she thinks it weird because she too, can feel the wind. Oddly, the only thing they can think off when they are around each other, is this powerful need to hug tenderly and then…run. And that fraternal feeling makes them become steadfast friends.

And this is only the start: soon, Aden meets his girl, Victoria and finds out she is responding to his call (his call? What call?). Also, she is a vampire princess. Mary Ann starts being followed by a wolf who can talk to her. Lo and behold, a paranormal world neither thought existed all of sudden burst into existence:witches, goblins, vampires, werewolves, ghosts, fairies all turn up at Crossroads following a tremendous burst of energy emitted unwittingly by Aden ever since he met Mary Ann: that day at the cemetery is ground zero for everything that happens in this book and there is a LOT.

How to free his souls? Why is all this happening? What is the nature of the odd thing between Mary Ann and Aden? Why can she negate his powers? Why can the werewolf she becomes entangled to, negate the negation? Why are the vampires here? And the other beings as well? Will Aden die soon? But can he at least kiss Victoria first?

Some of these questions are answered here but some are left to be discovered. Plot-wise the book is really interesting and I was left guessing at every turn. But truly, the greatest aspect of Intertwined is the characters and the complex relationship they have with each other. Their lives become, and you will have to excuse the inevitable pun, intertwined: all of them, including the souls, have a part to play and that made for seriously good reading. Every time I thought Aden or Mary Ann (the story alternates the point of view between these two) would behave in a way, they did something else. In that sense the story was entirely unpredictable. And I can’t wait to see it all unraveling (the next book is quite appropriately titles Unraveled so yeah, that was another lame pun).

My favourite characters were Mary Ann and Aden, the two humans. It was with some degree of sadness that I saw the author going the standard way and pairing Aden with the hawt/mysterious vampire and Mary Ann with the hawt/mysterious werewolf and I couldn’t help but to look at the equation (Human guy + Vampire girl) + (Human girl + Werewolf Boy) = Intertwined and to sort of wish that the vampire and wolf would be removed so that the humans would hook up with each other. (The fact that Victoria seems to be the Only Good Vampire in the middle of Very Bad ones is also a cliché I am not really fond of. Because really. Why? Why is she the only good one? Why are ALL the others bloodsucking EVIIIIILs except for her?) .

I really did love Aden and Mary Ann and thought they were both very down-to-earth characters, completely commited to finding out what the heck was happening, except for when they were with their respective love interests: then it was all very intense and overwhelming. I do understand that teenage love can be deeply felt but part of me wondered if the dramatic element didn’t come from the Supernatural nature of these relationships – with the immortality and forbiddance and all that. Although, if I am going to be honest, I do have to say that I totally get the werewolf attraction and I may have sighed once (or twice) when the werewolf (I am not saying his name because the mystery behind his identify is another cool thing about the book) growled in protectiveness and possessiveness towards Mary Ann. Sometimes one cannot deny the allure of an Alpha bent of protecting the girl.

This is really my only quibble with an otherwise truly excellent novel. Bring on the next.

Notable Quotes/ Parts: I have to say, the opening chapters with Aden and the zombies and the souls and meeting Mary Ann were very effective in introducing the characters and setting up the story. I never looked back.

Verdict: great plot, great characters with a slow executed supernatural mystery and some romance: what is not to like? Harlequin Teen has a good thing going with their YA series and you should check it out.

Rating: 8 – Excellent

Reading Next: Monster by Christopher Pike