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33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not your typical werewolf story, November 1, 2000
Robert McCammon is a very versatile writer -- each of his books is very different stylistically and thematically, but so far the three I've read have all been very good. Out of those three (Swan Song, Gone South, and The Wolf's Hour), TWH definitely has the least literary merit, but it is great in other ways.This book follows two plotlines, which alternate back and forth every few chapters. One takes place in Russia in the years immediately following the Revolution, and covers our hero's youth, and the other in 1944 Nazi-occupied Europe, which is where the main story takes place. The 1944 segments read like "Indiana Jones meets James Bond, with a twist." Constant action, usually our hero against huge odds. He always wins, always gets the girl, and although he's a beast on the battlefield he's the suave ladies' man otherwise. Still, this is a fun, fast-paced romp through Nazi territory, with several really fun scenes and many completely unbelievable ones. The thing that I really disliked about these sections of the novel were the depictions of the Nazis. Every Nazi soldier was a stupid incompetant who deserved a terrible death, and each and every officer a blatantly sadistic, evil fellow. Every Ally, however, is smart, resourceful, good looking (except for the obligatory caricature characters), charming and friendly. That just didn't sit well with me. This main portion of the book was an action-fest, but it was the flashback segments that were really much more interesting. The second story told here is that of pre-adolescent Mikhail Gallatinov, around 1920. After his family is brutally murdered following the Revolution, the kid is bitten by a werewolf. These segments detail his growing up and coming to terms with himself and the world around him, and are much better written and more captivating than the segments when Michael is grown. This book has its ups and downs. First of all, the writing noticably improves as the book goes on. At the beginning there was frequent poor word choice, bad sentence structure, and very poorly written action scenes. As the author grew into the book, though, that cleared up a lot. Unfortunately, McCammon for some reason in this book felt it was necessary to include semi-frequent relatively explicit sex-scenes, which I think were supposed to be erotic but most of the time just sounded stupid. On the other hand, the author raises and answers some good questions about werewolves, and thankfully silver bullets and such aren't mentioned even once. Overall, this is a fun, fast-paced book with lots of good action and some terrific scenes. Unfortunately most of the characters are rather one-sided and many scenes, such as Sandler's train and the concentration camp, are utterly unbelievable. This is a much better werewolf novel than the dreadful Moon Dance or boring The Silver Wolf, but it by no means is going to win any literary awards.
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by Robert McCammon
by Robert R. McCammon
by Robert McCammon
by Robert R. McCammon
by Robert McCammon
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