Customer Reviews

The Orphan

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

 

 

You'e got to read all three books, in order of course. When we were reading these books they were loose, typed pages that we passed around the room. We asked my brother, "What does the character look like?" He said, "Use your imagination" These three books make you forget where you are, you think you are living the book. I have an advantage, Robert Lester Stallman is my brother. He was alot of fun to grow up with. What a sense of humor.

There are darn few really good werewolf novels. In fact, there aren't that many werewolf novels at all but the good ones would be Guy Endore's superb 'The Werewolf Of Paris', James Blish's fine 'There Shall Be No Darkness' and Robert Stallman's excellent trilogy 'The Book Of The Beast' {comprised of The Orphan, The Captive & The Beast}. Beautifully written and surprisingly subtle with strong charactizations and settings--this book in its entirely is probably the best werewolf book available and a fine novel in anyone's book. Not really a horror novel, athough there's plenty of horrorific stuff going on--it's more an American road book, but the road is the path that the lead character's soul is going on. A exceptional book {or books}, well worth your time.

I read this quickly but could not stop dreaming about it afterwards. I kept rewriting the ending in my mind... it is that addictive! It's great 'cos you never really know what or who the beast is and he fascinates you totally.

This is the first book of a trilogy about a werewolf(beast) shape shifter that learns what it's like to be human through the body of a boy. This book focuses mostly on growing up and sexual urges and does great on that subject but it doesn't seem to let the wild beast out. It seems rather tame to me.
I find it similar to another book called 'The Beast Within'. Both were published about a year apart. Now this book's character is more savage and less tame.

"The Orphan" presents the reader with serious problems. You're never sure you should like the lead character as much as you do. After all, he is the monster of this bizarre morality play..or is mankind the monster? This IS another problem Robert Stallman forces us to carry into our world.

This is a werewolf novel like Nancy Collins would be writing (years later)

I read these books many years ago and have always remembered them. I was a student of Robert Stallman as a freshman at WMU and greatly admired his teaching style and his writing style. I don't read as much science fiction and fantasy as I used to but these books remind me of why I liked it! I'm enjoying re-reading them. It's like visiting a whole 'nother world...

I came across this book at my local library in Beloit, WI and then later came across the third book, The Beast, at Costco Drug store there. I bought it immediately, but refrained from reading it until I finally, after years of searching, found all three available at a used book store in West Los Angeles ten years later. The Orphan, the first book, still haunts me in a BEAUTIFUL way. I was 12 when I began reading it, enduring chicken pocks in the early spring. My health condition may have intensified my feelings as I read the book as well as the early stages of my own growing puberty and sexuality. I found the graphic content and deep descriptions very disturbing, often arousing and exciting and I could well relate to the character, Charles, that the Beast incorporates in the second half of the book. I thought I may never find out more about this book and the author, nor another soul who had read it, but I was certain that whoever had would be affected deeply by it. It is a story full of passion, whimsy at times, and searching. Well, I loved it and would love to meet or speak with the author one day. It was great reading a book about a monster who is not really a monster, but a being you feel for more than most others, in literature, as well as the bodies he manifests.