Tim McGregor

Well, didn't this come out of nowhere and slap me around!

I've read five or six novels by McGregor now and I've enjoyed the hell out of every single one. The author has this incredible sense of story and is the master of the slow burn, typically leading to an understated, yet devastating conclusion. Which I love.

This book, however, caught me completely by surprise. Where the first was very much a police procedural with a little werewolf action layered over top, this one is a full on action show more novel. Buildings get wrecked, people get eviscerated, and wolves scrap. There are big budget action sequences in this one that I wasn't expecting, but enjoyed very much.

And yet, there was still that same thing that I get from every McGregor book...the inability to guess where it's headed next, and an ending that's unexpected and unexpectedly impactful.

I find middle books in a trilogy normally kind of just sit there, advancing the plot, but not really having much in the way of stakes. This second book in the Bad Wolf Chronicles completely confounds that stereotype.

I had so much fun with this one. show less

Well, this was a solid ending to a solid trilogy.

This final book was perhaps the least favourite of the three (hey, there's gotta be a favourite and a least favourite, huh?) but it was by no means a disappointment.

To be honest, I thought it was going to be. There was a set up from the first novel that McGregor very cleanly, and very sharply smashed to bits at the end and I was extremely happy he did. I won't blow it, because that set up comes back again in this novel, and I was rather show more disappointed. I felt like McGregor was backing out of a particular plot point (Okay, I will say it involves ending the werewolf curse).

But I have to say that, while he twisted back again, McGregor is a talented enough author that he got me to freaking buy into the twist back...and not just buy into it, but enjoy it.

This is a fantastic series about a difficult subject. There's a lot of werewolf stories, but there's really only a handful of good ones. This trilogy is among the very best. show less

I've so much to say here, I hope I can get it all out.

First and foremost, this book...this damned book. It's incredible. After finishing McGregor's WASPS IN THE ICE CREAM I'd been looking for more from him. At the time, the bookstore was out of everything except this one, which I bought without even bothering to read the back.

I'm typically not too enamoured of historical settings, but in the last couple of months, I've been entranced by Brom's SLEWFOOT and even moreso by Alex Grecian's RED show more RABBIT but I have to say, of the three, this one absolutely grabbed me.

McGregor's strengths are all on display here:
His characters live and breath and settle into your heart as real people. I ached for Hester. And Will, for all of that. But every single character is finely crafted and carefully drawn. Which ties into one of McGregor's other strengths...don't come into one of his novels expecting slam bang action in the first three-quarters of the book. McGregor is an absolute master of slowly building both the story and the tension, building not with big bricks, but specifically chosen small stones, carefully fitted into place. You may think, as the reader, that he's overloading you with extraneous detail, but he's not. All that detail pays off. ALL of it. So, all those things you learn about the people, the town, their attitudes and their behaviours...your patience is rewarded.

And finally, there's the sheer storytelling ability of the author. Very much like WASPS you'll feel very little horror in the first half, and only some in the third quarter. But that last bit?

Damn.

Without spoiling anything, I will say that McGregor crafted—and I choose that word carefully, because this guy does magic with words that goes beyond writing—scenes that left me teared up, heartbroken. I went through one entire sequence, and it actually, honestly, hurt to swallow because I had a lump in my throat through the entire scene. Other scenes left my heart thudding in my chest. Several times, I know I whispered expletives, or things like, "oh no..."

There's books that are a great read. And I love those. I can examine the language, the style. They're a great experience.

But then there's books that go far beyond that. They become the reader's reality for a time. You slip out of your own life, and you fall into the world inside that book. That's a far more rare experience for me, but it happened here. I found myself two hundred years in the past, and I lived this book.

Why Tim McGregor doesn't have a major book deal and is lauded as one of the premiere authors of our time—not just a horror author, but an Author—is a mystery to me.

This is a brilliant book. show less

Anyone who follows my reviews is more than familiar with my adoration of all things Tim McGregor, and this series in particular. But seven books in, honestly, this series should be running on fumes by now, right? It's a little long in the tooth, and honestly, how much more can be wrung from a woman who can see and talk to the dead.

Well, if you're Tim McGregor, apparently, a lot. Gantry's story takes centre stage this time around, along with the titular Cordelia, who is utterly fascinating. show more In fact, if there's any downfall to this installment, it's the explanation of Cordelia's backstory. I'd almost have preferred to have just left her mysterious.

But this one earned all its stars for a very minor subplot that most likely passed over. Ray Mockler's father, Joe. The event that happens in this novel is something that was shockingly close to what I went through three years ago with my mother. My mother and Ray's father were of very similar dispositions. And everything that McGregor ran the younger Mockler through in the course of this subplot is everything—EVERYTHING—that I went through as well.

I literally read several pages of this novel with my mouth hanging open, convinced the author had dug around inside my head, six years before I'd even experienced my own subplot.

Anyway, long story short, sometimes, reading about a fictional character managing an incredibly awkward, rough, socially unacceptable situation that you yourself went through? It can be healing.

And I never expected to get that from the seventh volume of an indie horror series. For that alone, all the stars. show less