The fight was coming. One way or another, it ended tonight.
Spending a few hours with one of the few cryptids left to be checked off my reading bucket list? Well, sign me up for that every time! And Luka T. Jacobs "Night Of The Dogman: A Battle For Survival" is not a bad addition to my "I'm tellin' you: these monsters are for real, y'all!" list by any stretch of the imagination. Especially if as I've understood it this was Jacobs' first book.
Creatures like that belonged in horror movies, not the Missouri wilderness.
Now if you want me to distinguish between the Missouri-based Dogman - which is apparently not quite the same as the Dogmen (Dogmans?) found in other regions - and critters like the Ozark Howler or even ye olde werewolves, well, except for the whole changing at night and allergies to silver bits for the latter, I really don't know what to tell you. And no, the Google wasn't much help in that regard either. Whatever you believe, you'd have to agree that they're all bad news and they all seem to have an inexplicable taste for humans - or at least as far as necessary to carry a story. I don't understand how the Dogman or Howler could survive evolution-arially speaking - I mean, they stink to high heaven (hey hunters: just follow your nose!) and love to show their prey their naughty bits by posing around - but that isn't an issue for very long this time.
It was an unsettling fusion of man and beast, the lines between the two blurred.
In terms of "Night" as a book, well, it reads very fast and it's definitely on the lighter side of the many, many cryptid books I've read over the years. Not in terms of the death toll or massive injuries that we humans manage to gather along the way, but in terms of an utter lack of evil spiritual or other hexed weirdness that a lot of these beasties seem to owe their existences to. And really, if we take what Jacobs provides as an oversight into their motivations, well, it just seems like the Dogman species - and here I speak in general terms, not just in terms of the one we deal with in this book - are actually just massive assholes that like to torture their prey and, again, might do better to completely avoid man altogether if they stopped and thought about it. But a wolf-creature hunting deer probably wouldn't have been all that interesting to read about, n'est-ce pas?
It craved the fear and desperation of its victims, the sweet taste of terror that lingered in the air.
Again looking at the book as a whole, this is not a bad first effort. It's definitely not Shakespeare and suffers mightily from a LOT of repetition. I mean, we know pretty well by the time its all said and done that Fletcher (the dog and only a dog) sticks by Adam's side, especially when he's checking out the perimeter of his property or tending to his chickens and looking after whatever fencing seems to need constant repair. And yes, even after Adam's family tragically died, we can see only too well that he is slowly recovering from the pain and loss, particularly whenever he sees or thinks about Ruby, he makes his heart/stomach/probably spleen for all we know flutter and feel that everything is going to be okay.
It wasn’t just killing. It was taking trophies.
Heck, we even get more than enough information about how dark the forest is just past the motion detectors and how "It’s been quiet… Too quiet." (yes, that line really appears!) throughout this whole ordeal. Besides, it's no secret that "somewhere outside, hidden in the dark, something was watching." Yeppers, something is out there. Every. Damn. Night. Oh and waiting, great googly moogly, don't forget the waiting! All in the tense silence and just beyond sight. Yeah, we got it! So yeah, for large stretches in this one, things get pretty hokey (as in the "noticeably contrived" meaning for those keeping track).
They knew it was here. The game had begun.
But even all through this, the execution is for the most part well-handled (one unforgiveable case of it being "quite" instead of "quiet", even though again, there's plenty of quiet to go around!). And honestly speaking, for a quick, pulp-esque cryptid tale, well, I've read a lot worse. The ending isn't the greatest as for a beastie that's been terrorizing these folks for a while now, it sure does go down very rushed and without a lot of fuss if you ask me. But if I eventually find myself with some blank spots in my reading schedule, which all too often I do enjoy filling with the creamy rich wholesomeness that is cryptid lore, well, I might just continue this series. And it seems like from that last splash page in my copy that Jakobs has more than a few more to choose from! So from me, it goes in the system with 3 solid claws. Or talons, however you want to count 'em up...