Dreadful Skin in Weird Westerns

May 13, 2015 Quentin Wallace rated it liked it · review of another edition

I had mixed feelings about this one. I love the weird western genre, especially with werewolves, as my first novel was a "weird werewolf western." And this book had some awesome ideas. A werewolf on a riverboat. Werewolves traveling around in a tent revival and adding more wolves to the pack as they traveled from town to town. A werewolf nun. Just some cool ideas, but for me it never quite took off.

The story jumped around more than I'd have liked for one thing. Also, part of the novel was writte ...more

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Jun 09, 2015 Julie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical, shorter-format, werewolves, horror-and-terror, western, horror-aficionados-challenge-2015, buddy-or-group-reads

It's only been a couple days since I finished this novel, but I find myself struggling to articulate why I'm leaning towards three stars. Premise-wise, it's a tale of werewolves in the Old West and features a badass nun/hunter named Eileen Callaghan, so should have been right up my alley.

Dreadful Skin is told in three parts, more like a set of three inter-connected short stories than a full novel. Because, yes, I really can't call this a 'novel': there's very little arc or development here, more It's only been a couple days since I finished this novel, but I find myself struggling to articulate why I'm leaning towards three stars. Premise-wise, it's a tale of werewolves in the Old West and features a badass nun/hunter named Eileen Callaghan, so should have been right up my alley.

Dreadful Skin is told in three parts, more like a set of three inter-connected short stories than a full novel. Because, yes, I really can't call this a 'novel': there's very little arc or development here, more like episodic adventures.

I really liked some of the more poetic flourishes Priest tries in the first section: a claustrophobic tale of horror unfolding on a steamboat anchored during a storm, with a rotating set of narrators. The setup is great there, and Cherie Priest has such good turns of phrase and a flair for description -- but for being a rotating set of narrators, the voices all sound pretty much the same, which is the main knock against this section.

And then the subsequent two parts... they're well-written, and tense/exciting at times, with such an interesting premise (traveling itinerant preachers preying upon the flock! the juxtaposition between religious fervour/fits and werewolf transformation and demonic speaking in tongues!), but they just didn't click for me. Mostly because I was invested in Eileen, but none of the other characters -- there's no real cast here, and for the most part I was just uncomfortable with the 'systematic sexual assault' turn that the novel took. Not that I can never read stories with rape, ofc, but it has to be well-placed, whereas this felt like one of those where it was simply being used to harden up a female character and turn her bitter and angry and violent and vengeance-seeking, which is an overused trope I don't really need to see more of.

While finding out more about Eileen and her, ahem, true nature, was interesting, I think this one would've worked best if it was just the first part as a one-shot short story, and their voices made more distinct. ...more

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May 10, 2015 audrey rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: texas, weird-west

Such a complicated book. Let's unpack this.

So: Priest loves to experiment with multiple POVs. In this case, six. This does and doesn't work. It doesn't work for the first story because we have five POVs thrown at us from the get-go, and then they're winnowed away as they're killed, but oy five POVs. It does work in that I see what she was going for with setting up five POVs who are then killed off one by one to narrow and focus the narrative.

Killing off five POVs doesn't narrow and focus the nar Such a complicated book. Let's unpack this.

So: Priest loves to experiment with multiple POVs. In this case, six. This does and doesn't work. It doesn't work for the first story because we have five POVs thrown at us from the get-go, and then they're winnowed away as they're killed, but oy five POVs. It does work in that I see what she was going for with setting up five POVs who are then killed off one by one to narrow and focus the narrative.

Killing off five POVs doesn't narrow and focus the narrative because we have exactly one chapter to meet these folks, then we're dropped straight into ZOMG WEREWOLF, all throat-ripping and lightning-flashing and--

Authors? Hello authors, pull in close, my kittens. *Kiss kiss*. Here is a thing: I love plot that is referenced by or dependent on weather. I love it like meow. So much love.

But if you forget to mention at the start of a chapter that it is raining cats and dogs, then later depend on that info once the werewolf arrives? It feels like deus ex meteorologica. I do not like this. I do not want to hunt back through that chapter to see if at any prior point heavy pelting rain was mentioned. It makes me cranky.

Other things that make me cranky: having three chapters of Tell (No Show) and then A Sudden Werewolf. I have had no time to fall for your characters. I have had no time to get to know them. I would like to know them better before they are eaten. And Priest does amazing characterization with very small strokes, which is an art, and if she's reading this please teach a class for other authors, seriously you do it amazing -- and yet still I was like la, body count.

That was the first story. The other two stories were a magnitude better, and if you think I am not here for (view spoiler) we should probably go for drinks so I can explain myself, because I am SO here for that. On every day ending in y.

Great heroine. Great supporting characters. Lovely Western Texas and surrounding environs. Sentences that give life for daaaaaaays. Weird inexplicable lack of passing the Bechtel Test getting a serious side-eye.

So: you get premature werewolves, deeply felt placeporn and short-lived supporting characters, along with a climax that was every last thing that Joe Lansdale's Dead in the West wanted to be but wasn't. A good time was had by all (except for that dude in the church, and no one was sorry). ...more

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