Customer Reviews

Benighted

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This story is about a world where 99% of the population are werewolves (although the word is never used in the story). The other 1% are regular humans. However, with such a small percentage of the population, they're very much considered and treated as a minority, and feel that every moment of their lives. The story is about a woman who works in the human branch of government, which is primarily responsible for making sure the werewolves don't cause utter havoc during the full moon, and has been given quite a bit of power to assure that doesn't happen. When two humans are shot with silver bullets, she undertakes to discover who did it, and ends up in a surprising and personally devastating place.

I was surprised by the depth of characterization and world building in this story. I admit I was expecting another slightly shallow werewolf action story. That's not what this is, but I certainly wasn't disappointed. Rather, I found myself emotionally involved in the characters and the love story to a degree I always hope to achieve when I read a book, but rarely attain.

So, cheers to the author for writing a great book. I can only hope the already being planned movie can live up to the story as written.

Kit Whitfield's Benighted is an excellent book that, as the author indicates, defies being stuffed into the pigeon-hole of horror or fantasy or science fiction. It is also a love story, dis-uptopia, detective story and social commentary. In fact, as the author says, it is ultimately a "novel."

The tale (yes, it's also a tale) is about Lola May Galley, a hunter ("dogcatcher") of prowling lycos (werewolves who are not self-confined during a full moon at night). Lola is also a detective and a lawyer.

In this society, the non-lyco Lola belongs to a minority underclass that provides essential services to the lycos who are privileged by law, tradition and the economy.

Lola tracks the murderers of her colleague Johnny Marcos and of her best friend's son, Nate. During this quest, she falls in love, against her better judgment, with lyco social worker Paul Kelsey and her life is at risk when a murderous lune Darryl Seligmann escapes from confinement in a hospital.

The trail Lola follows leads her, not only to the solution of the crimes, but also to a legal and moral chasm in the stratified society depicted in the novel.

What I most enjoyed was the counterpoint between the suspense of the chase ("dogcatching" in dark parks) and the sweet and playful moments between Lola and her lover Paul as well as Lola and her nephew Leo.

I also liked the eerie images of lunes, such as when Lola watches Paul "furring up" or when Lola has dreams of being a lune and recalls how lune bodies are beautiful in their form and movement. You also get a sense of the freedom there would be to be inside their skin.

Whitfield does not pound us over the head with an academic history of lycanthropy but she does inform her novel with just enough history to add a touch of depth and reality and, sometimes, lyricism, e.g. "Paul says that in Middle English there was a word meaning moonlight bright enough to see by . . . a silver fish glinting through the water was loten, a lovely melancholy girl had loten eyes."

Lola herself is a complex character, no angel for sure, but she has a depth that seizes and sustains the reader's interest throughout the novel. Although she remembers (and sometimes rebels against) the things her mother taught her, she has had a horror-filled youth in the institution where young non-lycos are held (the "creches"). She has emerged hard-nosed and unpredictable but she is a survivor for all that, effective in her work. When we see her devoting herself to child play with her nephew and in her relationship with Paul, we realize that a spark of joy has been preserved, despite all the physical and societal abuse that has been directed at her.

Somewhat as in Brave New World and 1984 the resolution of the novel points to a profound flaw in both the alternate reality created by the author and in the broader modern society in which we live. This, too, is not driven home by a sledge hammer but is portrayed more subtly through the actions of Lola and one of the bent society's henchmen, Dr. Parkinson.

If there is one weak point in the novel, it is a small one - Lola as lawyer. She is depicted excellently as a "dogcatcher" and detective but is less credible in the lawyer role that is ascribed to her.

I am not in the habit of reading "werewolf" novels but I would recommend this book as a compelling and worthwhile read for the generalist, the specialist or any one who enjoys a good tale.

(as opposed to a "werewolf novel"): this is a beautifully written novel with the structure and mood of female-narrated neo-noir. Highly recommended, but with the caveat that it's less like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake books than like Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist or Richard Paul Russo's dystopian near-future San Francisco. Dark, disturbing and an extremely satisfying read.

Lola Galley lives in a world where over 99% of the population are lycanthropes. As a 'bareback' for the one night a month of the full moon she patrols the town searching for transformed citizens breaking curfew, taking them into custody and prosecuting them. We follow her life over the course of one investigation.

For anyone attracted to this book because it has werewolves in it - proceed with caution. I'd classify this as alternative history rather than urban fantasy, set in a world where there are no simple answers, only difficult choices.

Lola works for DORLA (Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity). Everyone who works for DORLA is anmorphic - barebacks. They are the minority of the population put in charge of the majority when that majority cannot be responsible for their own behaviour - on the night of the full moon. DORLA have a separate legal system, they arrest without trial, interrogate, disappear people. But they do it within the framework the majority have given them. From the moment they are born a bareback's life course is already set, they will go to work for DORLA, there is no other choice for them.

Lola is not always an easy character to like. I jotted down whilst reading that she wasn't sympathetic but I feel this is wrong. It's only by reading the whole book that you understand her. Particularly her confrontation at the end, as she is trying to explain to a lyco what being a bareback is actually like. Her story is heartbreaking because she is caught in a hard, brutal life that she cannot escape from. Through Paul and Leo, Lola's life is opened to something new but it's such a fragile delicate thing. At the end of the book I was hopeful but I prefer happy endings. Some people may find the ending unsatisfying, but I think it fits with the tone of the rest of the book and is realistic to the world in which Lola lives.

There is a passage about halfway through which I think is the heart of the book.

"He didn't know this was the end of his life. If nobody warned him, he couldn't have known that he should have loved those last hundred yards, that they weren't just an obstacle to getting to where he planned, that the sounds of his feet on the pavement and the wind in the branches were all he was ever going to have."

You could take those words and apply them to most of the characters we meet - Lola, Paul, Johnny, Marty, Nate. I think on a re-read, I'd be mentally saying to the characters these are the moments you need to hold onto.

The story is beautifully crafted, the reason I've dropped half a star, is that I'm not sure it's a book I would read again. It's made me think, still a couple of days after I've finished it I'm thinking about it. But I don't want to revisit Lola's world any time soon

I've spent the last three weeks reading Benighted off and on. I have a hard time describing how I feel about this book - in one respect I feel that it is well-written and very lifelike, even if it deals with lycanthropes, but in another, I feel that the story is flawed. I think that it was hard to stick with it because the tone is so depressing and dreary that I needed breaks.

Lola (or May) is a sympathetic character, but that does not, in any way, mean you'll like her, but I couldn't help but feel sorry for what she's been through and how those experiences have affected her. The main problem I had with the story was that the whole business of DORLA seemed odd. I would think that by this time, the organization would be obsolete and none of the Lycos would be afraid of Barebacks since they are supposedly the inferior species and there are so few of them. For me, it just doesn't make much sense.

I went to the author's website and she said that she preferred the U.K. title, Bareback. I feel that Benighted is a much more fitting title, as it isn't all just about the treatment of Barebacks, it's both. And since Benighted's definition at the beginning of the book is: 1. (adj) in a state of pitiful or contemptible intellectual or moral ignorance, typically owing to a lack of opportunity
2. (archaic) overtaken by darkness
It seems to me that both definitions can be applied to both Barebacks and Lunes in different ways. But maybe that's just the American in me talking.

I did at times become bored with the book, probably due to it's excessive length (not to mention again how down it is). Now I don't mind long books at all, but Benighted is 516 pages and there were many ramblings that could have used a drastic paring down. With that said, I did find it interesting and thought provoking, but I'm not sure I would read another book from Ms. Whitfield. I was looking forward to reading something a little different than the typical werewolf book and was left disappointed. Maybe, going into it, if I had known how much more a sociological study of minorities this is than a werewolf story, I would have liked the book better.

If this is literature, then its more exciting than I'm used to; and if its a thriller, then its one of the best-written books in the genre that I've come across in a while. In Benighted, Kit Whitfield gives us a whole new world, a world that emerges fully formed from the author's imagination. Whitfield has clearly spent a lot of time getting to grips with the world she has created, thinking through the intricacies of how our own world can be so plausibly turned inside out. The mythology and the science and the prejudice are all packed tight together and seep into the reader slowly, wonderfully - leaving you ready, by the end of the book, to see what other adventures this world can hold.

Benighted is a hard book to review: for starters, it's almost impossible to explain without spoilers. It includes lycanthropes (werewolves), but no magic and few action scenes, and delves deeper into moral and psychological issues than any urban fantasy I've ever read. It portrays a dystopia of sorts, but the point still seems to be the story, not some political message. There's a murder mystery or two involved, before the plot veers off in a direction you've probably never seen in a simple mystery novel. And then there's a bit of romance and family drama... naturally, they go in unexpected directions too. In short... in the UK, this book is simply classified as "literary," and I can see why.

I found this to be an incredible book, and not at all what I was expecting. Many people dislike the protagonist, so for the record, I really liked her... she struck me as a basically nice person with some issues (PTSD, maybe?), and a more realistic and well-developed character than I'd seen in quite awhile. Other reviewers have called it "dark," and in a way it is, but not in the way you'd expect for a book that includes crime and werewolves. This isn't a book about gruesome murders or intense humans-vs-werewolves fights... it's about people ("werewolf" seems like an inappropriate word to describe most of the lyco characters, and we see very few of them actually in their animal form). How far people will go when given impunity. To what extent a minority group will close ranks when faced with a hostile world--but wait--just how hostile is that world, really? Along with an original writing style, the lingering questions are probably what makes this book so intelligent and so worthwhile. And of course, it's also a good, entertaining story.

Highly recommended.

I'm not even sure what to say about this book. I want to complement the author on good writing, but I can't actually say that I really liked the book. I think it has alot to do with the fact that the heroine of the novel was just NOT likable. Lola is cruel and does evil things to other people on the simple basis that since bad things were done to her then she has the right to do bad things to others. Through the entire middle section of the novel I find her no better than a simpleton, yet she is suppose to be a lawyer (granted, without the education). She doesn't seem to get even the most obvious answers. I couldn't understand why the intelligent people of the book liked her or made comments about how they would accept her in their groups.

On the positive side, I did feel that the author's writing style was excellent. The visual discrpitions and the well put-together alternate world was well done. I would recommend the book to a reader who appreciates a well-written novel, but who can overloook an unlikeable character.

This story was a surprisingly strong draw for me. I'm always interested when somebody looks at a given social issue with a different pair of eyes, and this did not disappoint. In the world Kit creates in Benighted, the majority of the population consists of Werewolves - referred to as Lunes. The thing is, they go crazy when they fur up and a very small subset of society that is unable to 'wolf out', referred to as barebacks, have to police the Lunes that get out on moon nights to keep the wolves from raging and destroying everything. Lune citizens legally have to lock themselves down every moon night, and the 'barebacks' at DORLA (the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity) patrol the streets, 'dogcatching' and arresting the people that find themselves without a place to keep them penned in.

Kit's writing style is very emotive and strong, and she really draws you into the scenario that unfolds - from the bareback point of view. There's a good amount of angst and intrigue throughout, and the interpersonal dramas that play out are fascinating.

I really enjoyed this book and highly recommend it.

I found this book to be a very compelling and moving read. It is so much more than a werewolf book, and really explores identity and majority/minority dynamics. The lead character is in a word, bitter, and she is very hard to side with thru most of the book. But she is also such an interesting case study in intolerance, and abuse of power- where she has any.

The world had some issues for me: I felt a werewolf dominant society would be more friendly to their other natures. More open backyards, running wild etc. Seemed odd that they would opt to lock themselves in closets etc.

The idea that bare backs had to care for the lycanthropic majority and risk their lives to live as secondary citizens was interesting, and unique.

Highly recommended for those who like social commentary, and dealing with tough unanswerable questions, with their monsters.