Customer Reviews

Wilding

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The story of an ancient line of female werewolves in an urban setting. Deborah, fifteen, filled with self-loathing and already pregnant, unwilling to be initiated into the family, runs away to make it on her own. Her adventure is juxtaposed with scenes of life within the werewolf society as they deal with events that may signal the end of their line.

As in her first novel, PRODIGAL, Tem shows her mastery at getting inside her characters' heads - all the more impressive considering these aren't even human. She believably portrays how the werewolves might observe the human world, the confusion of the city streets, through all their senses. Yet this novel seems to be too much a simple character study, and I couldn't help but feel there was a lot more story waiting to be told. There is an ending, but I was left wondering exactly how I got there. The characters don't change much, and the final events strike the reader as inevitable from the start.

A near miss from a writer whom I will nonetheless still be keeping an eye on.

Wilding is a saga about a family of female werewolves, focusing on the family living in present-day Colorado. The clan has been split in two: the city family, living in a quartet of brick houses built by their ancestors, with matriarch Mary, her daughter Ruth, Ruth's daughter Lydia and Lydia's pregnant teen daughter Deborah; and the country family, living in a cave in the mountains, controlled by Mary's sister Hannah, and her several daughters (there are no sons because if a boy is born, they kill him, no husbands because they are only used to make babies and then killed). Deborah runs away when the family decides she isn't ready for the initiation, prompting them to search for her.

The plot focuses more on the dysfunctional family and subplots (Deborah living on the streets with a homeless man, Ruth and her cousin Marguerite attempting to take over the family, Lydia's new friendship/lesbian relationship with a co-worker) than it does on the werewolf aspect. It felt as if the werewolf plot was incidental and a few kills were described in passing.

The story of each woman is told in alternating chapters, making it a quick read when you want to find out what happens to a particular character and have to read through three chapters to return to her. And the mountain clan is barely mentioned. It would be more interesting if the main characters featured a few from the city and a few from the country, instead of all of them being from the city.

The description of Colorado and the houses, caves, mountains and werewolves, is very well-written, making me feel like I'm there and witnessing a person turn into a wolf. But at times the story gets bogged down with description. For instance, Tem will be writing about a major event - like Mary finding Deborah - and stop in the middle to write pages of description about a memory Mary has about that particular place. It becomes very distracting and irritating.

The characters are interesting, but being werewolves, they seem like they have no emotions. Most of the minor characters are so nice to them, but it's like they can't comprehend the kindness and lash out at them instead, making it difficult to like the characters. But I guess I'm just used to the werewolves being the villains instead of the protagonists.

Wilding is okay as a family saga, not-so-great as a werewolf novel. But I enjoy family sagas, so I didn't hate it. If you want to read a good werewolf novel, try The Howling by Gary Brandner, The Wolfen by Whitley Strieber or Ravenous by Ray Garton.

This book was so scatterbrained that unless you ARE the author you will not understand much of the jumble of words typed in this book. Mostly it is a Man-Hater Book ! I thought it was going to be about werewolves not wierd old old old women.

Melanie Tem's WILDING has 1 moment of pure poetry -- in 1 chapter about 1/2way thru the novel, Tem Dscribes her female-werewolf heroine running thru the streets of Denver, & the sights, sounds & feelings she Xperiences during those dozen pages R almost worth reading the novel 4 all by themselves. The rest is a standard, not-very-involving werewolf novel with a noticeable, distracting pro-feminine bias -- male werewoves R considered sneaky, untrustworthy, basically worthless. This view reaches its high (or low) point in Tem's later DESMODUS, in which male vampires R considered helpless & worthless, & Tem goes out of her way 2 insult men 4 chapters at a time; this forced me 2 stop reading after 150 pgs, tho I agree most men R slime (& I am one). Tem's later REVENANT has a GORGEOUS 1st- & last-chapter framing device that is as beautifully written as the above-cited chapter in WILDING, but the rest of the book is almost 2 painful 2 read. I'd like to Njoy & respect Tem's writing, but her biases & the pain in her writing put me off....