Review: A nice cheesy classic horror trilogy
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 05 27, 2014
This is a fairly good series, but I'll admit that it took me a while to really get through all three books. If you're someone who loves cheesy 70s horror fiction or just like the Howling movies, it's worth checking out. There are some slight spoilers here, enough to give a bit of a warning but nothing that would completely ruin the books.In the first two books you can see Brandner's writing get a bit stronger and how the era influenced his writing. These two books were written during the late 70s and as such, you can see where the sexual revolution was in full swing. While I don't know if he intended it as such, there's sort of a parallel here between werewolves and sexuality. The character of Marcia, a female townsperson and secret werewolf, is probably one of the greatest examples of this since she represents the more destructive and selfish side of sexuality/sensuality. While her overtures towards Roy could be initially seen as her simply disruptive, she's quickly shown to be extremely possessive and destructive, the side of sexuality that isn't happy with just sleeping with a married man. No, Marcia has to completely own Roy, a theme that plays into book 2, when Marcia tries to get her revenge on Karyn. It's kind of interesting to see this play out. I'll warn you though, the characters here aren't entirely fleshed out, so at times they can seem a little one note. This sort of thing (characters, themes, and undertones) is fairly common for 70s horror, so people who are familiar with the genre won't find much to dislike here.The third book is easily the weakest of the bunch. Brandner throws out a lot of the universe rules he created in the first two books and as such, book 3 should be viewed as a standalone piece and not really part of the overall universe set up in the first entries. If the first two books represent the 70s, the third book kind of represents the 80s. Sexuality isn't as big of an theme here as it was in the first two books and there's a bigger emphasis on violence and "belonging". It's not bad, but I'd be lying if I didn't occasionally feel that this was sort of written for a paycheck or to meet some sort of consumer demand. I think that this would have been a little better if it had been written about a different pack of werewolves as opposed to the pack introduced in the first two books, since it'd give Brandner more room to expand and breathe. But then, it likely wouldn't have sold as well.Overall this isn't bad. I won't appeal to everyone, but then older horror novels always have a mixed appeal. These aren't really meant to be great fiction per se, just something to enjoy for a few hours before you move on to something else.