from the pen of icarus blake

Full disclosure, I’m not even that far in the book yet.  I couldn’t spoil it for you, even if I wanted to.

There’s this sequence at the beginning — not the very beginning, maybe 50 pages in — that describes the most common ways for werewolves to die in the modern world.  Jones takes the werewolf lore, the way the transformation works, and pulls it into the context of plastic and interstates.  He describes wolfing out behind the wheel as road rage gone wrong, your paws tangling with the accelerator so you’re rocketing down the highway at 100 mph with a broken windshield because you whacked it with one clumsy claw.  Or getting a taste for fries, and making yourself public enemy number one when you happen to seek out that starchy-salt goodness chemically engineered to be as addictive to your animal brain as possible and maul two dating teenagers to death.

I won’t even describe the fate of the werewolf wearing pantyhose.

But mixed in with these grisly demises somewhere between human and animal are those purely animal things.  Wake up a starving wolf in the middle of the night and eat the family dog, rummage through the kitchen trash, and wake up with a deadly stomach ache come morning.  Its this seamless transition between animal and man that permeates the prose of Mongrels, makes it such a captivating read.

I’ll have more to say on it later, I’m sure.