The Wolf Gift

Reuben is a 23 year old recent college graduate with a trust fund and a Porsche. Do you hate him yet? Give it a minute. He's also breathtakingly beautiful. The author makes this point over and over again, like she thinks it's developing his character. Literally everyone who meets Reuben will at some point remark on his beauty, probably at length. And ohmygosh, it's such a drag for him! He just wants people to take him seriously as a man, but all they can see is his stunning good looks and his age. But Reuben's girlfriend and mother are constantly telling him to grow up and get a job. I mean, geez, it's not his fault that he has no direction in life! Seriously, his life is super hard, in ways we regular looking poor people probably can't show more understand.

Luckily, things are about to change for the better in Reuben's life. He's sent by the newspaper he works for (he got this job through family connections as he has no experience/education in journalism) to write up a real estate listing for this huge old mansion up on a cliff overlooking the sea. The house is beautiful, surrounded by redwoods as it is, so he decides to buy it from the stunningly gorgeous older woman who is selling it. Naturally, they bang. This is what always happens when two beautiful people meet. I mean, sure, Reuben has a girlfriend but she's cheated on him before, so he figures she owes him and she won't mind because she's super-gorgeous too and so can't be jealous of a woman over 30. (P.S., she isn't). Again, any ugly/poor people reading this book will just have to take it on faith that life is very different for Reuben.

Anyway, in the middle of the night, the gorgeous older woman is murdered by her drug-addicted brothers who are looking to score some money for their next party. Reuben is almost killed too, but at the last moment, a huge monster breaks into the house, kills his attackers, bites him and runs away. You guys, this was totes a werewolf and now Reuben has super powers!!

He heals from his wounds almost instantly and discovers that his hearing now allows him to eavesdrop on conversations held on the other side of the city. Even better, he can now detect and track the scent of evil. Also, when night falls, he begins transforming into a huge wolf monster with super strength, speed, and agility. Naturally, he begins using his powers to murder people. Don't worry though, only evil people. This is what Reuben has been needing in his life. Finally, he has the power of life and death as well as a slew of other godlike powers. Now people will have to respect him.

The rest of the book passes in a series of orgiastic murder sprees where Reuben in wolf form tears apart rapists with his huge claws, scattering their various pieces to the winds and devouring their innards. Afterwards, he returns to his priest brother for absolution and then home to his fucktoy, a dull-eyed, animated sex doll of a woman who wafts about his castle in lacy nightgowns having sex with him in beast form. She's a nature guide, so she's totally down with bestiality.

Reuben moves this soulless automaton into his giant creepy castle like a week after they meet. That's fine with her. Her whole family is dead and it's "the rainy season" so she literally has no job or other concerns to distract her from Reuben. Man, talk about low maintenance! Weeks later he breaks up with his girlfriend over text while he is out to dinner with his Stepford wife. It's almost like the author just remembered, "Oh yah, he had a girlfriend at the beginning of this book!" The scene is so jarringly ridiculous. Don't worry, his girlfriend is already banging someone else too. She's not mad that he hasn't spoken to her since he was almost murdered and has since moved a complete stranger into his remote castle hideaway. She just wants to remain friends. Whew, it really must be easier to be rich and beautiful.

"He suckled her breasts as she sighed." GAG.

Oh Anne Rice, I grew up reading your early work and now it has come to this. It's like she's writing her own fanfiction. Everyone is beautiful, hyper-sexualized, rich, all powerful, and morally superior. Any and all challenges or antagonists are instantly overcome, so it's hard to say that there is actually a plot of any sort.

I was positively staggered by the anti-climax of this novel. The "big baddies" are a pair of cartoonishly evil Soviet scientists with funny accents and forged medical papers that try to have Reuben committed to their care so they can perform evil torture-experiments on him. They show up at his house with thirty peace officers and a sheriff and are like, "You vill be combing vith us now, leetle boi!" The sheriff is all, "Geez, he doesn't seem crazy. Are you sure you're doctors?" And then, predictably, a werewolf tears the doctors to literal pieces in Reuben's living room. Seriously, what did they think would happen?

Following this scene, Reuben throws a dinner party in the same house that very night, presumably while cleaners are plucking brain matter out of his carpet with tweezers. Why does no one care about the horror show level violence that they have just witnessed? I think I would be off my feed personally for at least a few hours. But then, I'm not a stunningly gorgeous rich person.

Anne Rice then goes on to explain how turning into a werewolf and becoming immortal is nothing more than evolution in action. You see, long long ago, there was this isolated species of humanity who gradually developed the ability to transform themselves into ravenous wolf creatures, and then, one day that ability was transmitted to homo sapiens through a mingling of fluids and a mutation occurred making the recipient immortal and all powerful. It sounds silly explaining it out loud because really, it's SO OBVIOUS. Come on, woman. That's not how science works. That's not even close to how science works. Can't you just commit to this thing and make it a result of a witch's or something? Why the hours of exposition for an equally fanciful explanation? show less

Anne Rice and I have had a tumultuous relationship over the years. She was my favorite author, then she had a personal crisis and changed the focus of her writing. I couldn't bring myself to follow along, so I had to leave her in favor of Kelley Armstrong, Jim Butcher and Charlaine Harris. Well...I am happy to say that she's back in my good graces with this one.

The Wolf Gift is about Reuben Golding, a California reporter who is called to a beautiful old mansion for an interview about the property and the disappearance of the former owner, Felix Nideck. During the night, robbers break in and stab Reuben but he is saved by a strange creature that rips his attackers to pieces and then leaves him bleeding and unconscious. While recovering show more in the hospital Reuben learns that he has been bitten by this creature and his wounds are healing at a miraculous rate. He is also growing taller, his hair is thickening, and his sense of hearing and smell have been heightened. You can see where this is going.

As Reuben learns more about his "Wolf Gift," we are introduced to a whole menagerie of characters and learn more about the Morphenkinder. Her spin on the werewolf legends is a little bit different (the full moon thing? not true), but the story she is weaving is fascinating. The language is beautiful and the narrative is intelligent, blending legend with religion, philosophy and science. My only complaint about the book would be that there are so many people to keep track of, but she is clearly setting up a whole new series here. I can't wait to see where she goes with this one. show less

I love werewolves. There's just something awesome about how it's a curse that brings out the utterly destructive, feral nature in humans and how it comes at the worst time, turning us into savage beasts. I love the lore of how it can be a corruptive influence that irredemably changes us, or a facet of our souls that changes us at certain points of the month dominated by the moon, or by certain strong emotions such as rage and sorrow.

I love the horror of it to the point that I even became one myself!

SO naturally, after reading "Interview With the Vampire" and seeing that Anne Rice wrote a series of novels about Werewolves, I picked it up from my local library (support your libraries, people), and scheduled some time to sit down to read show more it and see what she had to say about it.

And uh... I've got some mixed feelings here, honestly.

Look, I'm not saying it's bad, but I'm also not saying it was good. Really, the biggest negative I can give is that it was disappointing. It's clear that Anne Rice is good with the gothic, but when it comes to the heart of a beast, she lacks anything creative to say. Yet I'm getting ahead of myself here; let me at least start with the positives!

Positives

If there's anything you can say about Anne Rice's writing, it is that it can be beautiful in a lot of ways. While I often prefer that she get to the point and stop lingering on paragraphs that verge close to purple prose, there's no denying that she had a command of the English language and could weave in minor esoteric philosophy and theological points into her works.

Honestly, that's all I can really say about this novel. It's prettily written, but everything else is unfortunately weak... which I'll get into next.

Negatives

Buckle in; I'm going on a rant!

First off, I didn't really feel like these were werewolves. As I said at the start of this, werewolves are a reflection of the savagery of nature compared to the civility of humanity. Yes, I understand that in most Werewolf stories, they're not similar to actual wolves. Real-life wolf packs are family units, and they care and look out for one another because the whole pack is as strong as the weakest one, and if everyone is healthy, the pack is healthy. Werewolves as horror are simply a device used to contrast our desire to be a part of society with the terror of being outside of it as a monster that preys upon people. That's what I love about werewolf stories and why I feel drawn to them.

Beware: Minor spoilers below

But in "The Wolf Gift", they're nothing like that. Protagonist Reuben Golding gets bitten and transforms, but is seemingly in control of himself from the start. He also attacks people, but he's drawn to the scent of evil, and thus, starts killing evil people who are trying to hurt or torture people, thus saving them. Because of his actions at the start, a frenzy starts in San Francisco about 'the man wolf'.

To me, this feels more like a superhero origin story. Complete with a lair because he inherits a mansion deep in the woods outside of the city. Yes theres a lot of visceral description about how he utterly decimates and destroys his targets, but at the same time its not really horror if its against evil people doing evil things. It's just a power fantasy that Reuben is in full control of without any stakes to his transformed state.

And that's at the heart of my problem with this novel: There are no stakes to anything in the story. There's no conflict, and when there is its resolved so quickly that you forget that the story had even started.

I'm not kidding about that. There's another werewolf we meet who makes some outrageous claims and threatens Reuben and his third girlfriend, Laura (I'll get to that in a minute), but that gets resolved quickly. There's a looming threat in the background that harasses Reuben's mother, but we only meet them once, and then, near the end, that conflict gets resolved in one chapter. Then all of the things that Reuben wanted to know about his status as a werewolf ("Morphenkinder", as they call them in the novel) is then told in a three-chapter wall of nothing but exposition. In the end, all of the conflicts that were set up, but never explored, are then told to Reuben and us, but never actually shown. It's just one of the characters telling all of the secrets. Then we get a happy ending.

Yay.

Another negative is that I just don't like Reuben as a character either. He's 23 years old, but talks like he's some wordly 40 year old man who has experienced so much in life. He's big into philosophy, theology, opera, classical literature, and more - conveniently, so is everyone else in Reuben's circle as well - and he has a weird sense of morality. For starters, he likes to cheat on his first girlfriend, Celeste. At the start of the novel, he is dating Celeste, a high-powered attorney who treats him like a young kid. He meets Marchent, who is looking to sell Nideck point, and then they bond over philosophy, old classical literature, and plays, and then sleep together, whereupon she wills the house to Reuben and gets murdered soon after.

THEN - while still dating Celeste - he meets another woman in the middle of the woods after one of his rampages and sleeps with her. He doesn't know her name, she is just outside in her nightgown, he gets a stiffy, and then they have sex, and he leaves, and internet stalks her, and suddenly she's the love of his life, not even a week later. It's only later that he breaks up with Celeste. Also, he trusts Laura (the woman from the woods) more than his own mother, and he forces his brother under the catholic priest oath to not tell anyone about his status as a werewolf after tricking his brother into a confessional.

Then, when his brother Jim mentions that killing people, even evil people, was immoral because we have laws to punish people, and it removes any chance the victims have at justice, Reuben dismisses it. At first, I thought this was going to lead into a central theme of the story where Reuben would have to juggle his morality between killing as vengeance vs. justice, but the book pretty much just agrees with Reuben on this. So... okay...

Overall thats why this is disappointing. It does mess with werewolf lore, but it also offered interesting ideas on how to twist and bend it to make something new, and then didn't do anything with it. In the end, all the werewolves are old - some centuries old - and are into philosophy, theology, classical literature, music, and art, and are really just vampires that can go into the day. Everyone is rich, worldly, philosophizing, good-looking, drinks wine, and are into Mozart. Not a single one of them is lower middle class or into sports, wrestling, rock and roll, or anything that would make them feel like 21st century people.

Overall Thoughts

Overall, I'm not going to finish this series. While I'll be reading her Vampire Chronicles up till Queen of the Damned, I think I'm done with the Wolf Gift Chronicles. I wasn't impressed with the storytelling, I don't really like the lore, and I was not a fan of the tell-but-not-show resolution we got. I want werewolves, moral dilemmas, beasts that try to hide their inner rage while fitting into society, and all that type of horror that we've come to know from werewolves as monsters, and got just another retread on vampires. At least Louise, in all his melancholy, questioned the justification of his kills. show less

If I am totally honest, I wasn't really excited about the subject matter of this book. I borrowed the book because I love Anne Rice novels, and I was -finally- getting my turn at The Wolf Gift. I have read around half of her Lestat novels ( unsure exactly), but I have not returned to that world in many, many years. And I wasn't positive if I wanted to, honestly. So I delved in.....and I was immediately spell-bound. This is a totally different universe from the Lestat novels. And I liked it.
By the time I had made it to chapter 5 I was totally absorbed in the story. Anne Rice has a way of drawing you into her stories, making you care about the people in her novels. You become emotionally invested in what is happening to the characters.

If show more you are looking for full moon transformations, mindless killing, and the cliche werewolf story - you won't find it in this book. I don't think it is a book about werewolves as much as it is a story about a man transforming and seeing the world in a different perspective. Yes the Wolf Gift changes him, but to me the book was a story of choices, learning, and understanding. Of course I am sure everyone who reads it gets something unique out of it. I was enthralled by how the Wolf Gift made the main character seek out innocent people who are being harmed, how he questioned whether or not he was good or evil. You fear for his safety, you want him to get the answers he is seeking. I can't remember another werewolf story or movie making me feel that way. It may have been a little gory, for some. But who actually knows an incredibly clean, serial-killer, much less a werewolf...? Blood-spatter and gore happens, folks. We pop open rather messily. And that has not bothered me with this novel.

By chapter 39 when answers starting coming, I was smiling at the history of were-kind. I really enjoyed this book. I love that is not a typical werewolf story. I enjoyed all of the characters and I am looking forward to the next chronicle. I hope to borrow it soon.
4.5 stars, what a pleasant surprise! show less

While not quite as captivating as Ms. Rice’s Vampire Chronicles, The Wolf Gift is ultimately a welcome addition to the horror genre. Ms. Rice’s monsters are as angst-ridden and as complicated as one would expect. Reuben Golding is neither beast nor man and must learn to navigate his way in this new world as best as he can. It is this journey and the unexpected twists and turns along the way that make Ms. Rice’s latest novel so intriguing.

What Ms. Rice does so well in all her novels is explore the definition of humanity as it applies to those not normally considered part of society; The Wolf Gift is no exception. As Reuben explores his new powers, the line between good and evil is very narrow indeed. His conflict over distancing show more himself from his loved ones to protect them versus the need he has to surround himself with those same loved ones is as understandable as it is heartbreaking. As outlandish as the entire scenario might be, the reader has no difficulties empathizing with Reuben and his fight for normalcy. After all, love and happiness are what everyone seeks.

A reader should be warned that Ms. Rice’s werewolves are not the neutered Twilight version. They are meant to savagely and bloodily destroy anything they want, and that is exactly what they do. The amount of blood shed, bones crushed, and flesh devoured could upset even the most iron-stomached reader. Ms. Rice pulls no stops in presenting images of a profoundly dangerous and powerful man-beast and the destruction he can so easily cause and so readily does.

Of almost equal disturbance however is the sexuality, nee lasciviousness on the part of the werewolves. Like most wild animals, they are driven by their need for food and for sex. Ms. Rice makes sure that there is very little that is left to the imagination in all of these descriptions, whether the scene is one of Reuben hunting or of him performing a more intimate act. While readers will have no issues with these scenes, except for the explicitness of them perhaps, Ms. Rice’s version of werewolf transformation is a bit more questionable and less understandable. Surprisingly, Ms. Rice allows her werewolves the pleasure of orgasmic transformations, and there are a lot of them. As expertly as they are written, these scenes make the reader feel voyeuristic and slightly dirty for having been privy to such intensely personal scenes. It is an interesting albeit unfamiliar reaction to a novel.

In The Wolf Gift, Anne Rice returns to her macabre roots with a complex and utterly gruesome tale of a man turned werewolf. Part coming-of-age novel, part horror story, Ms. Rice transports readers to coastal California through her lush and vivid descriptions, pulse-pounding pacing, and intricate cast of characters. Fans everywhere will welcome the Queen of Goth’s refreshingly frank take on yet another well-known monster.

Acknowledgement: Thank you to Netgalley and Knopf Publishing for my e-galley. show less

Ms Rice has made some pretty weird twists and turns in her writing career. She has written BDSM erotica, steamy romance, ancient vampire fantasy, contemporary witches, religious fiction. Now she has left the Church, this is her latest addition to her bibliography: werewolf literary fiction.

The Wolf Gift is the story about a man that has been called Beautiful Boy all of his life, a label he detests. He is a reporter, and when he visits a mansion to write an article about, he gets attacked by an mysterious assailant. He survives, but it seems like things are changing. Changing his whole identity.

Even though Ms Rice may have left the Church, religious themes are very distinctly present. Very distinctly. I call this book werewolf literary show more fiction on purpose. This is not a light fast-paced paranormal read. The Wolf Gift is heavy stuff, continuously spiralling toward philosophical insights and ethical inner conversations about the true nature of good and evil. I guess she brings up some valid points here, but to be very honest that was not what I was expecting. I was hoping to see something more like her older work from her vampire-era. The Wolf Gift wasn't what I thought it would be at all.

This just really isn't my kind of book. I started skipping their philosophical discussions after a while. I am sure some of you will enjoy them, but I will warn you. Do not expect this book to be fast-paced or something that keeps you on the edge of your chair. This is something you might read in a comfortable chair with a sophisticated alcoholic beverage of your choice. Something you will discuss over dinner with your theological discussion group. Or something like that.

If the only thing I didn't enjoy in this story was the themes, I might have given this a higher rating. Something that really bummed me out was how horribly shallow the characters were. They felt like sock-puppets, just for show. They had no real personality, they weren't consistent. At some point I got confused by who was speaking, because all of their voices are almost identical. I was a bit disappointed by this. The woman who has created one of my favourite characters of all time, the vampire Lestat, wasn't able to bring this promising cast of characters to life.

Another thing that struck a nerve was how she handles the female relationships with Reuben, the main character. He switches effortlessly between lovers, loving (as in "I love you", not as in lusting after) them in a single week. Someone that made a very deep impression to him in the first half of the book, gets completely forgotten in the second half. He cheats on his girlfriend, but his girlfriend doesn't care because she understands. He gets a different girlfriend, and when he sees the old one, they're friends. No awkwardness at all. Even if a book is fiction, I like the story to have a certain credibility. I was very much disappointed in that area.

The Wolf Gift is not a bad book. There is a market for this kind of book, and I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy it. But in my humble book-lover's opinion, this isn't Ms Rice's best work so far. show less

Back in 2011, Anne Rice took a detour from writing about vampires and wrote a couple novels centering on another creature of the night, the werewolf. The resulting book was THE WOLF GIFT, and according to her, writing it was pure joy. She freely admitted to using a lot of her favorite tropes, starting with having a supernatural monster as the hero, along with a lot of gothic touches such as a mysterious death, an old dark house and an equally dark woods in which secrets are hidden, not to mention the creation of a new mythic origin story, and the lore that comes with it. Rice was a prolific writer and she new her author’s toolbox very well.

Rice’s hero is Reuben Golding, an early twenty-something writer who finds himself on show more assignment at a secluded mansion (is there any other kind in these kind of books) on the Northern California coast. Once there, he is seduced by the owner, an attractive older woman, but their night of love making is interrupted by a home invasion. The woman is killed, but Reuben is saved by the timely intervention of a beastlike creature, though he is bitten during the altercation. The reader knows where this is going, and soon Reuben is undergoing some big changes when the night falls. But Rice’s take on the werewolf is not to see him as some doomed and cursed figure like Lawrence Talbot, but instead is a mighty hair-covered superhuman, endowed with enhanced senses and super strength. This Man Wolf, as he is referred to in the book, retains his human awareness, and is drawn to those committing evil acts. He can literally smell evil, and the reader is treated to scenes of Reuben ripping apart murderers, rapists, and those committing abuse. At the same time, this Man Wolf recognizes the innocent and spares them. Adjusting to his new circumstances remarkably well, Reuben still wants to unravel the mystery of what he has become, and why this wolf gift was given to him. Most of all, he wants to make contact with others like him, and learn what they know. Fortunately, his late lady friend left him her estate, and during his prowling in the nearby woods, meets a new love interest in Laura, a damaged woman who has a thing for giant hair covered men.

Along with a new supernatural protagonist, THE WOLF GIFT departs from a number of Rice’s usual plot points, as it is totally set in contemporary times, and the locale is contained to the Northern California area of San Francisco and Mendicino, a place where Rice lived for many years. It was nice to get out of the hot house southern gothic decadence of Louisiana where much of the Vampire Chronicles and the Mayfair Witches series were set. But despite the change in locale, there were some unique tried and true tropes that clearly marked this as an Anne Rice book, starting with her hero. Reuben Golding is from a family with money, more than that, they are culturally refined in a very proper way—the kind of people who have dinner parties where poetry is discussed while classical music and jazz play in the background. This is not unlike the protagonists in most of Rice’s books, and while some have accused her of being something of a snob, I think these were the kind of characters she was simply the most comfortable writing, and she stuck with what she knew. No way was Anne Rice ever going to write a novel about a grocery store bag boy being bitten by a werewolf or a vampire. But as a main character, I found they Reuben to be not that interesting, he becomes a werewolf, and is pretty much down with it as it seems to make his pretty good life even better. I think a better protagonist would have been Stuart McIntyre, the high school kid Reuben saves from being beaten to death by some gay bashers. During the melee, Reuben accidentally bites Stuart, passing on the wolf gift to the boy. In a lot of ways, THE WOLF GIFT could be a super hero origin story, that of the Man Wolf and his teenage sidekick. But that might be giving the book too much credit, as it is very lacking in genuine suspense and danger. There are a couple of potential Big Bads, but are dispatched with ease, though their exit is a great WTF did I just read scene. Truth is, in a lot of passages, you could easily have switched out the werewolves for vampires without much changing of the prose at all. This is especially true toward the end where Rueben and Stuart have a sit down with some older werewolves, and a lot of exposition is unloaded—another standard Rice trope.

But on the upside, nobody could world build better than Anne Rice, or set a mood for a supernatural story that could really draw a reader in. And clearly this werewolf story reads like it engaged her more than her later vampire books, which feel like they were written for the die-hard Lestat fans, but for many of us, were a case of very diminishing returns with each new book. And though I found fault with THE WOLF GIFT, I already have a copy of its sequel, THE WOLVES OF MIDWINTER, and plan on reading it. show less