At Long Last
Oct. 26th, 2022 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crockpotcauldronSomeone in the lost books goodreads group found The Book. The root of my werewolf obsession. The one I've been looking for since 1999. I have asked friends and forums over the decades, I have scoured tens of thousands of entries in databases for vampires, werewolves, invisible mind control shapeshifters, kidnapping by scientists, everything I could remember about the book. I've flipped through all my elementary school papers hoping for a scrap. And at long last, here it is. I don't know how I missed it.
I couldn't even bring myself to read it for a day, because I was so overwhelmed. What if I remembered it wrong? What if it was bad after all, and I just had low standards as a kid, or distorted it with nostalgia?
It was better than I remembered. I had remembered a few choice bits - some of the unusual setting details, like men turning into wolves and women turning into bats, shapeshifters family runs through the woods, and almost all of the details of the kidnapping scene, the anti-superpowers precautions, and the escape. I remember it as a very thrilling book, with real dramatic tension from the clever and prepared antagonists, some real James Bond shit for the elementary school library. It left a very strong footprint on my mind, and I have been digging through the often-lackluster werewolf genre ever since, looking for another fix of whatever that was. And here is is again, and it was everything I remembered and more. The author appate tly mostly did spy stuff and thrillers for adults, like Peter Abrahams, and it made for a very tightly written book with emotional complexity, high stakes, and clever tactics.
Anyway, the title of the one true werewolf book is The Runton Werewolf and the Big Match, and the werewolves are shape-shifting aliens called Gronks. It's extremely funny.
I couldn't even bring myself to read it for a day, because I was so overwhelmed. What if I remembered it wrong? What if it was bad after all, and I just had low standards as a kid, or distorted it with nostalgia?
It was better than I remembered. I had remembered a few choice bits - some of the unusual setting details, like men turning into wolves and women turning into bats, shapeshifters family runs through the woods, and almost all of the details of the kidnapping scene, the anti-superpowers precautions, and the escape. I remember it as a very thrilling book, with real dramatic tension from the clever and prepared antagonists, some real James Bond shit for the elementary school library. It left a very strong footprint on my mind, and I have been digging through the often-lackluster werewolf genre ever since, looking for another fix of whatever that was. And here is is again, and it was everything I remembered and more. The author appate tly mostly did spy stuff and thrillers for adults, like Peter Abrahams, and it made for a very tightly written book with emotional complexity, high stakes, and clever tactics.
Anyway, the title of the one true werewolf book is The Runton Werewolf and the Big Match, and the werewolves are shape-shifting aliens called Gronks. It's extremely funny.
