Warren Rochelle's Blog - Posts Tagged "werewolves"

Wolf Moon by Charles de Lint

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm a Charles de Lint fan, but I have mostly read his novels set in Newford, his imagined Canadian city where the magical and the mundane intersect, where "ancient myths and magic spill into the modern world." Ghosts wander its streets, and the Gentry, who followed the Irish emigrants from the old country to the new, still cause trouble, and sometimes come into conflict with the magical beings already here, those associated with Native Americans. Music and art are often a part of this magic.



And this summer, as part of my research for my current novel-in-progress, The Werewolf and His Boy (the working title), I am reading a fair bit of fiction about werewolves of one kind or another. Which brings me to Wolf Moon, by Charles de Lint, a tale not set in Newford or in Canada, but rather in a kingdom far away, and once upon a time. There is music, a harper, and a magical being, little people, and a werewolf, a innkeeper's niece, and there is a love story, and a community--all vintage de Lint--and vintage fairytale--and ballad.



But--this is early de Lint, published in 1988, and there is the promise of the lyrical tales that come later. The "once upon a time" language is not as smooth as I am used to with de Lint's fiction. But the premise is sound. As he describes it:



"I remember thinking ... how so many high fantasy novels were BIG stories involving nations, worlds, races of men, and magical beings. I wanted to read a smaller story about more ordinary people--people whose destiny wasn't to save the world, but rather to make some sense out of their own small lives (which for each of us is the big story.



I also thought it would be fun to read a novel in which the noble, magical harper turned out to be a cad, while the fearsome, monstrous werewolf was actually a pretty nice guy. I suppose it was the beginning of my interest in writing about marginalized people--outsiders, if you will . . ."



So, we have the story of Kern, a werewolf, a shapechanger, scorned and cast out by his parents, his beloved--their love too easily transformed into hate--and on the road for a long time. He falls afould of Tuiloch, a harper who can call up monsters with his music, and is something of a monster himself. He has killed more than once. Kern escapes Tuiloch's monster-hunter and finds himself, after almost drowning, at the Inn of the Yellow Tinker and Ainsley and for the firs time since Kern was a child, a family, a home, and people who loved him and whom he loved.



Kern and Ainsley, the innkeeper's niece (and half-owner of the inn) fall in love. So, can he keep his true nature hidden? Should he? Kern begins to feel safe--then, the harper, who is still looking for Kern, comes to the valley.



I enjoyed reading Wolf Moon--and I added to my knowledge of werewolf lore. De Lint's later novels, like Forests of the Heart, The Ivory and the Horn, and Moonlight and Vines, are much stronger and more beautiful. But this isn't bad.



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Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Becca Thornton is turning fifty and the face that stares back at her from her mirror looks “perfectly ordinary. It was a face like that of any other woman of a certain age in a one-horse town like Wolf’s Point” (1). The hot flashes have started; she is beginning menopause and she’s divorced. Her husband has traded her in for a “twenty-something blonde bimbo and a sports car.” And she works in a hardware store. Perfectly ordinary. Or is she? Along with the first hot flash, “suddenly and unexpectedly, superheating Becca Thornton’s body from head to toe,” there was “something new in her reflection, a flickering of golden eyes and fur, visible for the blink of an eye. Something feral and wild . . .” (1).

Something feral and wild indeed.


Becca Thornton is becoming a werewolf—something of a surprise, to say the least. The old, old magic that persists in this town has found her, as it has other women of “a certain age” in Wolf’s Point. To say her life will be completely changed probably qualifies as one of the understatements of the year.


So begins the debut novel of award-winning author, Catherine Lundoff. This tale is one of the supernatural, and the magical, and the human—how does a fifty-year-old woman negotiate such a transformation, literally, when she becomes a wolf amongst the other women of the Club, and metaphorically, as she crosses a certain boundary that all women must cross, into maturity, into a somewhat different imagining of self. But this well-told, and often funny, tale is about more than werewolves. It is a coming out story and a love story, as Becca finds herself attracted to her neighbor, Erin, she of the “slow, lazy smile.”


Ultimately, Silver Moon is a story about identity. Becca has been asking herself who is she? Not Ed’s wife, anymore? No longer young? Attracted to women—not to men, the way things are supposed to be? Add to all that being a werewolf and all that means, including a newly powerful sense of smell, which clues her in on such things as people just smelling wrong.


It’s a lot to handle for a gal.


Oh, yes, Becca has to learn about being a hero, too. It turns out things in Wolf’s Point aren’t so placid and small-town-y as one might think. Oya, formerly known as Sarah and former Club menber, is the leader of the Slayer’s Nest, a paramilitary group that want to do away with werewolves by curing them of this disease that is “disgusting and wrong.” Oya, it seems, is motivated by revenge, blaming the Club for the death of her parents, and she is motivated by a mistaken desire to rid the world of evil. When Oya and her Nesters come into direct conflict with the Club, things get interesting—and dangerous—for Becca, Erin, and the other women. Things become a matter of survival—and life and death.


In Lundoff’s skilled hands both the familiar coming out story and the story of falling in love, becomes a sometimes dark, sometimes light, fantasy of good vs. evil, of werewolves who know themselves fighting those who can’t accept themselves. That the werewolves are middle-aged menopausal women, and not the proverbial beautiful young heroines, is one of the novel’s strengths. The beauty and grace of maturity is recognized for what it is. As a young woman deputy tells Becca, “To be one of the guardian grandmothers, to protect the land and the people. It’s a great honor, you know. Not many are called” (33).


The element of mystery also adds to the novel’s strength as well. Oya, the leader of the Nesters, says she is motivated by revenge, but is that it? How did she convince this strange Dr. Anderson to come up with a cure? Where is the money to build a secret lab in the woods coming from? Does Oya’s fear and hatred of werewolves have something else behind it? The language she uses, disgusting, wrong, a disease, is clearly parallel to the language used in anti-gay rhetoric. Some might argue that Lundoff is inserting a little social commentary here. Maybe so. Silver Moon is a novel about self-acceptance, with Becca the focus of this interior conflict. It is also about acceptance of others—and here is a place, Wolf’s Point, where maturity as well as youth is celebrated, men and women are both strong, and who you love is your business. But this is not utopia. Not everybody agrees. Things do get messy and dangerous. The course of true love doesn’t run smooth.


After all, Silver Moon is a novel about human beings, with all their ambiguities and frailties and weaknesses and strengths, loves and hates, some of whom happen to be werewolves.


Clearly there is more story to be told.

But, fear not, a sequel, Blood Moon, is in the works.
Recommended.




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