In March I stumbled upon this website called LibraryThing.com where you can throw your name in to receive advanced copies of books soon to be published for the purpose of reviewing them. I put my name in for maybe ten books, not sure what I would end with. The second weekend in April there was a new book waiting on my doorstep called Wereworld: Rise of the Wolf.
I’ll be honest, after looking at the cover art, I wasn’t really expecting great things. I mean, really, how many more werewolf/vampire/zombie books do we need these days. Was this just going to be another hokey take on the latest tripe filling local bookstore shelves? Well, I had the book in hand, and there was something mildly thrilling about having a book that wasn’t even going on sale for five more months, and I had signed up for it, so I sat down to read.
First off, the setting of the book is a fictional place called Wereworld. It’s a bit like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, with the time period feeling like the Middle Ages. The kingdom is called Lyssia and it is surrounding by the Seven Realms. There are common folk, soldiers, and what essentially makes up the gentry and ruling classes, the Werelords. While the main character does turn out to be a werewolf, there are werepeople of every species imaginable and they are introduced gradually as the story progresses.
The storyline itself was actually not half bad. Young farm boy, Drew, finds out he is really a werewolf, and not only just a werewolf, one of the last werewolves and apparently displaced heir to the throne of Lyssia. His struggles, his role and the relationships he develops are a bit predictable, but given that it is written for younger audiences, the predictability is fairly acceptable. The vocabulary choices start out feeling fresh, but after a while, I began to feel like the author was getting too much use out of his thesaurus. The description of the settings was above par and did draw me in and help me visualize fairly precisely what things looked like. The dialogue was a bit clunky and awkward; however, younger audiences probably won’t be bothered by it. I felt it was a little heavy on the foreshadowing early on and I wasn’t really surprised by much in the story. The names for the various lands told me exactly what to expect in their descriptions and the types of characters to be encountered there.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised that I enjoyed as much as I did. I wouldn’t place it up there with my favorite stories, but I would read it again to my thirteen-year-old son. I think I would even consider reading further installments. Not a bad first attempt for a new author.
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