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dantastic's review
4.0
Maria is interested in a mysterious co-worker named Thiess but Thiess is the bearer of a dark secret: he's a werewolf! Will Thiess share his secret with Maria before the mysterious Tracker guns him down?
Remember the good old days before sparkly vampires and baby-lovin' werewolves, when monster tales were more than excuses for some smut? Wolves Dressed is Men is a throwback to those glorious days.
Wolves Dressed as Men is a slim, 60 page volume but Steve Lowe crams it to the brim with lycanthropic goodness. It's like a Ramones song. It's really short but still the perfect length. You get werewolves, action, intrigue, a touch of romance, and a nosy reporter trying to tie it all together.
I can't say much more than I already have without spoiling things. If you think you can find a better sixty page werewolf novella, be my guest. I'll stick with this one.
On a side note, I may have to add Steve Lowe to my short list of Goodreads Authors who aren't assholes. After I ordered Muscle Memory from Amazon, he sent me Wolves Dressed as Men as a bonus.
Remember the good old days before sparkly vampires and baby-lovin' werewolves, when monster tales were more than excuses for some smut? Wolves Dressed is Men is a throwback to those glorious days.
Wolves Dressed as Men is a slim, 60 page volume but Steve Lowe crams it to the brim with lycanthropic goodness. It's like a Ramones song. It's really short but still the perfect length. You get werewolves, action, intrigue, a touch of romance, and a nosy reporter trying to tie it all together.
I can't say much more than I already have without spoiling things. If you think you can find a better sixty page werewolf novella, be my guest. I'll stick with this one.
On a side note, I may have to add Steve Lowe to my short list of Goodreads Authors who aren't assholes. After I ordered Muscle Memory from Amazon, he sent me Wolves Dressed as Men as a bonus.
sheldonnylander's review
4.0
This is going to have to be a very brief review. Otherwise, it will give too much away for a very brief book.
Wolves Dressed as Men by Steve Lowe feels like a classic take on a werewolf story. None of that touchy feely paranormal romance crap that seems to have infected most bookstores like a cancer in the last few years. The werewolves depicted in this book are brutal, animalistic killing machines.
The book follows three viewpoints: Thiess (who recently contracted lycanthropy), Jacoby (a disgraced tabloid reporter following a series of murders), and the Tracker (who is...well, if you can't figure that out...). Through each one, we see the story but through different eyes, as well as different philosophical and religious viewpoints on the worth of a man's life and his soul. My personal favorite was Jacoby's parts, mostly because we learn about the story from an outsider perspective, as well as a few bits of other information that...again, I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that there's a reason I would categorize this under “horror” or even “science fiction” more than “fantasy” or “paranormal.” No, it does not have to do with aliens. And Jacoby is just a really interesting and identifiable character, with the feel of having a much richer background than we are given a chance to fully learn about.
Very craftily written, and I was kind of disappointed at the book's short length. I really wanted to read more. There are heavy details that are left unanswered and open to interpretation, or they could just be left open for a potential sequel. The way the book ends was brilliant in it's own way, and again could be left to the readers' interpretations, but if it's how I took it, I would absolutely devour a sequel to see where this goes.
A short but worthwhile and highly recommended read that will definitely leave you thinking.
4 out of 5 stars.
Wolves Dressed as Men by Steve Lowe feels like a classic take on a werewolf story. None of that touchy feely paranormal romance crap that seems to have infected most bookstores like a cancer in the last few years. The werewolves depicted in this book are brutal, animalistic killing machines.
The book follows three viewpoints: Thiess (who recently contracted lycanthropy), Jacoby (a disgraced tabloid reporter following a series of murders), and the Tracker (who is...well, if you can't figure that out...). Through each one, we see the story but through different eyes, as well as different philosophical and religious viewpoints on the worth of a man's life and his soul. My personal favorite was Jacoby's parts, mostly because we learn about the story from an outsider perspective, as well as a few bits of other information that...again, I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that there's a reason I would categorize this under “horror” or even “science fiction” more than “fantasy” or “paranormal.” No, it does not have to do with aliens. And Jacoby is just a really interesting and identifiable character, with the feel of having a much richer background than we are given a chance to fully learn about.
Very craftily written, and I was kind of disappointed at the book's short length. I really wanted to read more. There are heavy details that are left unanswered and open to interpretation, or they could just be left open for a potential sequel. The way the book ends was brilliant in it's own way, and again could be left to the readers' interpretations, but if it's how I took it, I would absolutely devour a sequel to see where this goes.
A short but worthwhile and highly recommended read that will definitely leave you thinking.
4 out of 5 stars.
djinn_n_juice's review
2.0
Sometimes as I finish a book I didn't enjoy, I relish the thought of writing the review that will tear the author a new asshole. I had a distinctly different reaction as I reached the end of Wolves Dressed as Men, because I didn't enjoy it, AND it was written by a friend.
I was confused. Last year, I read Steve's debut, Muscle Memory, and it narrowly missed being in my 2010 top ten. Literally just missed it; it was number eleven. MM was clever, surprising, constantly funny and poignant, and it ended perfectly.
Then, a few months later, I read this, and it was...well, an unpleasant experience. Werewolves? I fucking hate werewolves! And I'm beyond tired of the whole supernatural romance thing....publishing companies have been vomiting out so many empty calories' worth of supernatural romance that it's quite possibly a fatal disorder, and when it finally suffers a heart attack and dies on its own bathroom floor as a DIRECT RESULT of its own self-destructive tendencies, I'll be first in line to laugh and point. Err, but, back to the book: after loving his first book, this one just didn't leave much of an impression at all.
Despite what some people would tell you, though, I'm not a total jerk: I talked to Steve before deciding to write a review because I wanted to see what was up with this. It turns out this was his FIRST book--written first--even though MM was the first book published. So this novella is fair game to be picked on, because you're SUPPOSED to pick on people's first novels. First novels are usually a teeth-sharpening process, and almost always end up being generic supernatural romance novels. Hemmingway's first book? Supernatural romance. Faulkner? Southern supernatural romance. Even the greatest novelist of our time, Guy N Smith, started his illustrious career with a supernatural horror novel that was basically a proxy of Twilight, only more hot chicks and mutant crabs were involved.
So, when I write my debut, you ALL have permission to pick on it. Unless I never manage to get anything published, in which case I'd appreciate it if you just softly tell me I'm truly an awesome writer and it's what's on the inside that counts, or some crap like that to make me feel like less of a failure.
Back to the book. I've had a lot of caffeine, btw.
I shall recount for you the reasons this book didn't work for me.
1. The lack of humor. This book took itself surprisingly seriously considering it was a supernatural romance. And, the characters were archetypal in...well, in much the same way the characters in my first novel were archetypal. I had the good fortune of being turned down by all the publishers, though, so I don't get to be publicly humiliated.
2. THE BACK COVER IS PINK. Pink. I'm not a homophobe or anything, but I don't want to carry a goddamned pink book around Phoenix.
3. As seems to happen increasingly, I knew what was going to happen before it happened with all of the plot points. I'm not sure if this was the result of foreshadowing or the use of these archetypal characters, but either way, I prefer my reading experiences to be surprising. And to not be populated with werewolves. Or detectives. I kind of hate detective fiction.
Those are my bones of contention, and I don't really want to click the "Save" button now, because this is the second time in a row I've read a book by a friend and then written a negative review of it. But, dammit, if I don't give them honest ratings, I might as well not even be here reviewing them. I DO NOT LIE unless money is involved.
But I can assure you I'll be buying the next thing Steve publishes--I can't wait to see what comes after Muscle Memory.
By the way, the official day for burning Muscle Memory is July first, so I suggest buying several copies before then so you don't get left out on all the fun!
I was confused. Last year, I read Steve's debut, Muscle Memory, and it narrowly missed being in my 2010 top ten. Literally just missed it; it was number eleven. MM was clever, surprising, constantly funny and poignant, and it ended perfectly.
Then, a few months later, I read this, and it was...well, an unpleasant experience. Werewolves? I fucking hate werewolves! And I'm beyond tired of the whole supernatural romance thing....publishing companies have been vomiting out so many empty calories' worth of supernatural romance that it's quite possibly a fatal disorder, and when it finally suffers a heart attack and dies on its own bathroom floor as a DIRECT RESULT of its own self-destructive tendencies, I'll be first in line to laugh and point. Err, but, back to the book: after loving his first book, this one just didn't leave much of an impression at all.
Despite what some people would tell you, though, I'm not a total jerk: I talked to Steve before deciding to write a review because I wanted to see what was up with this. It turns out this was his FIRST book--written first--even though MM was the first book published. So this novella is fair game to be picked on, because you're SUPPOSED to pick on people's first novels. First novels are usually a teeth-sharpening process, and almost always end up being generic supernatural romance novels. Hemmingway's first book? Supernatural romance. Faulkner? Southern supernatural romance. Even the greatest novelist of our time, Guy N Smith, started his illustrious career with a supernatural horror novel that was basically a proxy of Twilight, only more hot chicks and mutant crabs were involved.
So, when I write my debut, you ALL have permission to pick on it. Unless I never manage to get anything published, in which case I'd appreciate it if you just softly tell me I'm truly an awesome writer and it's what's on the inside that counts, or some crap like that to make me feel like less of a failure.
Back to the book. I've had a lot of caffeine, btw.
I shall recount for you the reasons this book didn't work for me.
1. The lack of humor. This book took itself surprisingly seriously considering it was a supernatural romance. And, the characters were archetypal in...well, in much the same way the characters in my first novel were archetypal. I had the good fortune of being turned down by all the publishers, though, so I don't get to be publicly humiliated.
2. THE BACK COVER IS PINK. Pink. I'm not a homophobe or anything, but I don't want to carry a goddamned pink book around Phoenix.
3. As seems to happen increasingly, I knew what was going to happen before it happened with all of the plot points. I'm not sure if this was the result of foreshadowing or the use of these archetypal characters, but either way, I prefer my reading experiences to be surprising. And to not be populated with werewolves. Or detectives. I kind of hate detective fiction.
Those are my bones of contention, and I don't really want to click the "Save" button now, because this is the second time in a row I've read a book by a friend and then written a negative review of it. But, dammit, if I don't give them honest ratings, I might as well not even be here reviewing them. I DO NOT LIE unless money is involved.
But I can assure you I'll be buying the next thing Steve publishes--I can't wait to see what comes after Muscle Memory.
By the way, the official day for burning Muscle Memory is July first, so I suggest buying several copies before then so you don't get left out on all the fun!
claudiaswisher's review
3.0
Really more of a long short story...like the opening chapters of a longer book. Thiess is a loner, even as Maria tries to burrow into his isolation -- she sees the good man he's trying to submerge.
Who's the Tracker,with the military-issue rifle? Who's he tracking and why? And then there's Jacoby. A down-and-out journalist who saw action in Afghanistan...and is now working for an unscrupulous tabloid.
The characters are in place, and we learn more and more. Thiess is a werewolf, but we're never told how this happened to him...The Tracker's determined to kill him, even following him into a church. Can he be saved? Does anyone care?
It looks like this is part of a longer story...I need to know what's going to happen to them all.
Who's the Tracker,with the military-issue rifle? Who's he tracking and why? And then there's Jacoby. A down-and-out journalist who saw action in Afghanistan...and is now working for an unscrupulous tabloid.
The characters are in place, and we learn more and more. Thiess is a werewolf, but we're never told how this happened to him...The Tracker's determined to kill him, even following him into a church. Can he be saved? Does anyone care?
It looks like this is part of a longer story...I need to know what's going to happen to them all.
nkmeyers's review
4.0
What could have been the most tedious day of my life was SAVED by [b:Wolves Dressed as Men|9995079|Wolves Dressed as Men|Steve Lowe|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1293073416s/9995079.jpg|14536154]! Seriously, I forgot my phone this morning AND I had an appt at the hairdresser's. That is a TERRIBLE combination worthy of complete fear and loathing and all things impatient!
BUT lucky for me I started Wolves last night and it is such a tidy, slim little entertaining short piece of fiction that it fit in my handbag AND happened to be there.
What kind of person takes were-fiction to work with them? Well, I guess now you know!
Anyway, it is really maybe ONLY a 4.5 of a book because in this genre there honestly could be some more gratuitous sex scenes, or senseless violence, or maybe some more visceral gore, but this book makes up for it with a strangely compelling reporter character who's had more important stories, some unusual were-action and an uncanny sense of the olfactory. hmm.
Plus there was nothing else like it at the hairdresser's, I guarantee it! Didn't even miss my phone which I usually tap on with ruthless abandon while waiting around for anything sort of like an adult finger pacifier!
So damn it, this little book gets five stars for being my savior today.
BUT lucky for me I started Wolves last night and it is such a tidy, slim little entertaining short piece of fiction that it fit in my handbag AND happened to be there.
What kind of person takes were-fiction to work with them? Well, I guess now you know!
Anyway, it is really maybe ONLY a 4.5 of a book because in this genre there honestly could be some more gratuitous sex scenes, or senseless violence, or maybe some more visceral gore, but this book makes up for it with a strangely compelling reporter character who's had more important stories, some unusual were-action and an uncanny sense of the olfactory. hmm.
Plus there was nothing else like it at the hairdresser's, I guarantee it! Didn't even miss my phone which I usually tap on with ruthless abandon while waiting around for anything sort of like an adult finger pacifier!
So damn it, this little book gets five stars for being my savior today.
xterminal's review
4.0
Steve Lowe, Wolves Dressed As Men (Eternal Press, 2010)
Dear Stephenie Meyer, Maggie Stiefvater, Jessica Coulter Smith, and, well, everyone back to, and maybe including, Whitley Streiber: this is how you write a werewolf novel. Or, given its length, the outline of one. But seriously, Steve Lowe just kicked all your butts around the room in a steel cage match, and you probably didn't even notice.
Plot: there's a werewolf. He's not too happy with being a werewolf. (Okay, the rest of you lot got that part down.) There is also a Tracker, who's trying to kill the werewolf. (Most of you got that bit, too.) But this werewolf, who goes by the name of Thiess, is confused enough with his werewolf self that he's not acting like a regular werewolf, at least “regular” as defined by the tracker. Thiess lives in the big city, trying to blend in. He's infatuated with Maria, a co-worker (when was the last time one of your werewolves had, you know, a job?), and she's kind of drawn to him, too. Every day after work, he goes to St. Stanislaus, a local church, and begs God for forgiveness for the crimes he commits in wolf form, begs God to lift this affliction from him. You know how well that's going to work. But the longer Thiess is afflicted, the more of his humanity he loses. As a bonus hidden track, there's also a serial arsonist at work in the ghetto where Thiess lives, and he's becoming more and more active as Thiess gets worse. The cops are looking for Thiess, of course, and the arsonist as well in their spare time, but the guy who actually has a chance of finding him is a reporter, once an embedded war correspondent in Afghanistan, now reduced to writing trash articles for a local tabloid. (And if you've never seen the 1983 movie Strange Invaders, do it now. I'll wait. That goes triple if your name is Steve Lowe and you hit on this plot angle by sheer coincidence.)
I've already mentioned the book's major weakness: its length. Wolves Dressed As Men reads far more like an outline than an actual novel. There's so, so, so much more that could have been done with this wonderful mix of characters and situations. The arsonist plotline, especially, is begging for a fuller treatment, and an examination of the parallel between werewolf and arsonist would have been endlessly fascinating, had it appeared. The conflict between the journalist and his buddy on the police force had a few great moments, and could have had much more. Imagine a confrontation between the police and the Tracker... I could go on like this for the rest of the review. This is a sixty-one-page book that could have been ten times as long, and Lowe (Muscle Memory) has the chops to make it work.
On the other hand, what's here is as solid as they come. When you find yourself holding a book this small, what you expect to be leaving behind on the cutting room floor is characterization. And to be sure, these characters could have been more fully fleshed out, but Lowe used a lot of the space here to draw a few of his characters as well as anything you'll find in a major-label novel. The action is believable (as much as can be in a novel about a werewolf living in a ghetto, you understand), the pace is breakneck, the plot is as hooky as the premise would have you believe.
I will continue to live in hope that Lowe eventually comes back to this story and turns it into the epic it so richly deserves to be. I'll buy it all over again, and be thankful for the opportunity, and if a six-hundred-page treatment of Wolves Dressed As Men is as good as a sixty-one-page treatment, there's no chance it won't show up on my best reads of the year list. Until then, I'll be glad I've got what I've got here. *** ½
Dear Stephenie Meyer, Maggie Stiefvater, Jessica Coulter Smith, and, well, everyone back to, and maybe including, Whitley Streiber: this is how you write a werewolf novel. Or, given its length, the outline of one. But seriously, Steve Lowe just kicked all your butts around the room in a steel cage match, and you probably didn't even notice.
Plot: there's a werewolf. He's not too happy with being a werewolf. (Okay, the rest of you lot got that part down.) There is also a Tracker, who's trying to kill the werewolf. (Most of you got that bit, too.) But this werewolf, who goes by the name of Thiess, is confused enough with his werewolf self that he's not acting like a regular werewolf, at least “regular” as defined by the tracker. Thiess lives in the big city, trying to blend in. He's infatuated with Maria, a co-worker (when was the last time one of your werewolves had, you know, a job?), and she's kind of drawn to him, too. Every day after work, he goes to St. Stanislaus, a local church, and begs God for forgiveness for the crimes he commits in wolf form, begs God to lift this affliction from him. You know how well that's going to work. But the longer Thiess is afflicted, the more of his humanity he loses. As a bonus hidden track, there's also a serial arsonist at work in the ghetto where Thiess lives, and he's becoming more and more active as Thiess gets worse. The cops are looking for Thiess, of course, and the arsonist as well in their spare time, but the guy who actually has a chance of finding him is a reporter, once an embedded war correspondent in Afghanistan, now reduced to writing trash articles for a local tabloid. (And if you've never seen the 1983 movie Strange Invaders, do it now. I'll wait. That goes triple if your name is Steve Lowe and you hit on this plot angle by sheer coincidence.)
I've already mentioned the book's major weakness: its length. Wolves Dressed As Men reads far more like an outline than an actual novel. There's so, so, so much more that could have been done with this wonderful mix of characters and situations. The arsonist plotline, especially, is begging for a fuller treatment, and an examination of the parallel between werewolf and arsonist would have been endlessly fascinating, had it appeared. The conflict between the journalist and his buddy on the police force had a few great moments, and could have had much more. Imagine a confrontation between the police and the Tracker... I could go on like this for the rest of the review. This is a sixty-one-page book that could have been ten times as long, and Lowe (Muscle Memory) has the chops to make it work.
On the other hand, what's here is as solid as they come. When you find yourself holding a book this small, what you expect to be leaving behind on the cutting room floor is characterization. And to be sure, these characters could have been more fully fleshed out, but Lowe used a lot of the space here to draw a few of his characters as well as anything you'll find in a major-label novel. The action is believable (as much as can be in a novel about a werewolf living in a ghetto, you understand), the pace is breakneck, the plot is as hooky as the premise would have you believe.
I will continue to live in hope that Lowe eventually comes back to this story and turns it into the epic it so richly deserves to be. I'll buy it all over again, and be thankful for the opportunity, and if a six-hundred-page treatment of Wolves Dressed As Men is as good as a sixty-one-page treatment, there's no chance it won't show up on my best reads of the year list. Until then, I'll be glad I've got what I've got here. *** ½
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