To paraphrase Rodney Dangerfeld, "Werewolves don't get no respect." Oh, they were cool once, at least in movies, but I'm always amused at the number of horror writers (notice I didn't say horror readers) who thumb their nose at lycanthropes as literary creations. What, zombies, vampires and ghosts are cool but manbeasts aren't? Artistic discrimination is a funny animal. But werewolves are "in" again--they're the new zombies, who were the new vampires.

Of course, werewolves have had better luck at the cinema: THE WOLF MAN, CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF, AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, THE HOWLING, WOLFEN, DOG SOLDIERS and GINGER SNAPS were all excellent films that treated their subject matter with intelligence.

In fiction, Gary Brandner's The Howling may have been the biggest bestseller, not because it was any good, but because it aped Stephen King's Salem's Lot. And having a hit movie adaptation (which significantly improved on the story) didn't hurt sales, either. His sequel novel (creatively entitled The Howling II ) was even worse, but the sequel after that (The Howling III ...) was pretty good. If nothing else, The Howling books established the concept of the werewolf pack/society; werewolves had always been lone wolves before that.

Thomas Tessier's The Nightwalker is an excellent psychological thriller that leaves to the reader's imagination whether or not the central character is indeed a werewolf or merely deranged. There have been other interesting novels--Whitley Strieber's Wolfen and The Wild--and many that I haven't read (I understand Kelly Armstrong's series is pretty good). But these are exceptions. I recently put down a new werewolf novel after only 100 pages because, as a friend said to me, it was "one long rape fantasy."

I've avoided Steven E. Wedel's wereolf novels until now because I didn't want them to influence a novel I was writing. Now that I've fired off my manuscript, I'm free to explore the world he's created over the course of his Werewolf Saga (outlined for Fear Zone by Richard Hipson last year). I'd have preferred tackling this epic in sequence, but since Scrybe Press just published the fourth volume, Ulrik, I decided to start there. And I'm glad I did: Ulrik may be the finest werewolf novel I've read. If, like me, you're worried about joining the Pack in mid-hunt, let me assure you that you'll have no trouble piecing together the back story.

In Wedel's world, werewolves bestow The Gift of lycanthropy on humans through the classic werewolf bite. Like vampires, they live for hundreds of years. However, they are unable to give birth to other werewolves, so kidnapping human children to raise as their own is part of their secret culture. A prophecy foretells that one werewolf will become the Mother of the Pack--able to give birth to werewolf cubs--and that her son will be the Alpha who unites the various tribes in a war against mankind... maybe. Wedel's previous novel, Shara, identified the likely (and reluctant) Mother, and this new book follows the efforts of various factions to determine the fate of her son, Joey. One such faction is led by Ulrik, who has spent hundreds of years as a self fulfilling werewol prophet.

I must confess that I despise prophecies as narrative devices regardless of genre. But Wedel's usage of prophecy didn't deter me in this case because of the different viewpoints on the subject offered by his characters; some buy it, some don't, others are agnostic.

Ulrik is smart and loaded with action--the mother-son on the run dynamic reminded me somewhat of TERMINATOR 2--but is more concerned with the politics, infighting, and mind games between the characters. In a structure not dissimilar to STAR WARS, the characters are all drawn to a single location--Urik's compound--and then their groups are split apart. The fun comes in watching as new alliances are formed, sometimes with tragic results, as the novel builds to its climax.

My favorite characters were the villainess, Kiona Brokentooth, and her comapanion and bodyguard, John Redleaf--a werebear. I laughed out loud with delight at Redleaf's introduction and couldn't wait to see him in action. I was a little disappointed that some of the action leading to the climax occurred "off the page," and after admiring Wedel's plot construction, the Big Confrontation felt a little rushed to me, as though some editing had been done to keep the book down to a manageable length dictated by the publisher. Still, it's never a abd thing when a novel leaves a reader wanting more.

I look forward to reading Wedel's other werewolf novels while waiting for the next one to come out. I reommend you run out and buy a copy of this one now; it's that entertaining.