Wolf Gift, Anne Rice (2012)

The below review will contain more spoilers than I usually have in my book reviews, but I really felt it necessary to cite specific events in order to truly make my points. Read with caution.

The first thing I'd like to say before we get into the meat of this review is that I have been a fan of Anne Rice since I first picked up Queen of the Damned in high school. I think her writing is elegant, incorporating larger ideas into a well-told story. Through her works, I met a lot of the close friends that I do today - we would sit down and analyze, dissect and do our best to look deeply into each character and their stories. If a character was left without explanation, we attempted to fill in the gaps ourselves; her works were rich with historical settings, which was something that I absolutely adored. It took all of us out of our hum-drum lives of high school and its ensuing homework. 

I personally like to think that we hold the things we love to high standards. We have expectations for them -- or at least I do.  I have a deep, abiding respect for Mrs. Rice, so it's with mixed feelings that I write this review. During my time at San Francisco State University, where I studied Creative Writing, in many of my writing workshops we were often told that a first draft is not going to be the end product. More often than not, you might throw out the entire first draft, after finding a particular piece within the whole that you think could be the seed for a greater story. And that's precisely what I think happened here, with Wolf Gift.

The main character is Reuben Golding, essentially a golden boy who's had everything he's ever wanted in life, except for the respect and acceptance of everyone around him. Since he's the youngest of the family, no one honestly believes that he can care for himself -- he's often referred to as Baby Boy, Sunshine Boy, and anything else that can include 'boy' in the nickname, though this it's meant in an affectionate if slightly deprecating tone. Despite being unable to finish medical school, Reuben has had no issues otherwise. His father is a college professor and his mother is an amazing surgeon. His girlfriend, Celeste, is an aggressive lawyer; what does Reuben do? Why, he's a columnist for the local paper, having gotten the job through his mother asking a favor of the editor in chief, with whom she is a close friend.

While visiting a house in a remote location of Mendocino County, named Nideck Point, Reuben meets and almost immediately falls for Marchent Nideck, who is in the process of reconciling the estate of her late Uncle Felix. Reuben and Marchent spend a passionate night together, before Marchent then leaves the house and all of its belongings to Reuben - and then is horribly murdered. In the ensuing chaos of intruders in the house, Reuben is attacked by what is presumed to be a dog. Paramedics somehow show up on the scene just in time to cart Reuben off to the hospital, where his mother moves heaven and earth to ensure that her baby boy receives the best medicine that the Western world has to offer.

It's right about then that things start getting a little strange. Reuben heals with amazing celerity, and even has a growth spurt. His eye color alters, and his hair starts growing in thicker, longer. His health bounces back nearly better than it had previously been - and even more odd, every time Reuben's mother has lab technicians attempt to run tests on cells or other things, the results come back as unbelievable, but then the specimens disappear without a trace. Eventually this all culminates in Reuben learning that he is, as he calls himself, a Man Wolf; that whatever attacked Marchent's house that night bit him and gave him the ability to transform not into a wolf, but into an amalgamation of both animal and man, with the man's superior mental intellect at the forefront.

In the majority of werewolf stories and mythologies, the receiver of the 'werewolf curse' is generally unhappy about this occurrence. Not so with Reuben -- rather, he ends up using his 'power' for good, which in the end actually turns out to be biologically programmed into him (which I took as a sidling in of the moral argument between atheists and those of the faith, but I could just be reading too much into it). He actually can smell out and is drawn to evil people, in order to entirely rend them apart through the most violent means possible. The story goes on to follow him through his attempt to learn about and control his nature, all of which is par for the course when it comes to a story about the creation of a supernatural creature. My issue with the story is that there is no conflict - as soon as a potential obstacle raises its head, it's dealt with usually by the end of the same or next page. Any time Reuben needs something, it's given to him, as though some omnipotent force (or, ahem, the author) sees fit that he should not be bothered with solving the issue. Cursed with a terrible gift? No worries, he's not overpowered with a lust to kill or anything. He can control it. Horribly lonely because of his condition? It's all right, there's a woman in that cabin over there that will accept him without explanation.

That was one particular thing that truly made me flabbergasted. Laura, a woman who is severely traumatized by the horrible deaths of her husband and children, accepts Reuben in his Man Wolf form without question. Whatsoever. He literally walks up to her cabin in the middle of the night (and quite honestly, dealing with the death of your immediate family by sealing yourself up in a cabin in a remote section of the woods smacks of deep and untreated depression to me, which makes this next part all the more awkward because it edges on abusing someone with PTSD or other mental issues), picks her up and carries her inside in order to have sex. Sorry for that spoiler, but I just saved you twenty five dollars. I understand that some people have fetishes, but when combined with the fact that Laura is quite obviously suffering from the loss of her family, and just instantly is put at ease by Reuben in his Man Wolf form: it just sets off all the red flags in my head. It's not romantic; if you found it to be so, please get your head checked. The sexual aspect of their relationship continues in a similar, absolutely bizarre vein, even to the point where Laura asks if she will ever have the boy behind the wolf; Reuben replies, why would you want him when you can have me? Yes, why would you want an assumedly level headed young man when you can have a beast that delights in controlling you under the pretext that it's protection? I can't imagine why.

Mrs. Rice is not especially known for her female characters, and it's always something that I've been disappointed about with her books. In the Vampire Chronicles, the female characters are always cold, distant figures, damsels in distress, or severely reprimanded for attempting to be feministic at all. In Wolf Gift, this pattern continues with all of the characters fitting into their particular niches. Laura is damaged goods, a damsel in distress who relies on Reuben (or maybe not, we're never really given her thoughts on the matter -- Reuben just handles her like a doll, constantly moving her around to where he needs or wants her to be); his girlfriend Celeste is an unfeeling, abrasive individual who cheats on him, and for some reason is all right with the fact that he cheats on her with Laura (their break up is the most unfeeling, odd one that I have ever seen, equating their relationship to nothing more than a week-long high school fling); even Grace, Reuben's mother, is a controlling and domineering woman who is slowly put in her place as Reuben comes into his own through the mastering of his new abilities.

The main issues I had with the book are twofold (aside from what I've described above): firstly, the fact that any DNA from the werewolves instantly dissolves of its own volition, either after being detached from the body of the werewolf or upon death of the werewolf. There is no scientific way to track these animals/creatures/men; all evidence of them will promptly disappear. This plot device was such a cop out that I was left asking why. What was wrong with the authorities discovering that there's some kind of man animal out there? Why couldn't it have been part of the plot for Reuben to fix his mistakes, and retrieve the samples taken from him, or destroy them? There's nothing wrong with giving a character some kind of problem to overcome - that's what makes a story. The fact that this neatly and so easily fixes what could have been a major problem for the characters just reeks of laziness. Especially since Mrs. Rice goes the distance to firmly root her werewolves in scientific terms, even explaining with medical terms the part of the body that is responsible for the change. It's like running a mile and only doing two laps, believing yourself to be done when you've really only gone halfway.

And secondly, the last half to the ending of the book was so mired in nothing by philosophical musings and tell-rather-than-show writing that it was like eating glass to just finish the damned thing. There's name dropping of theologians, poets, and musicians, as though these things are going to prove to us that this book is the high brow material that it presumes itself to be. At the very end, all of the characters literally gather around a table and express their thoughts over the past events, but mainly the older werewolves explain their doings(which were off screen) while Reuben was running amuck in his super hero persona. My issue with this was that their scantly described stories were far more interesting than what had happened to Reuben - why couldn't we have learned about Margon the Godless and how he ended up contracting the Chrism, the word that the older werewolves use in place of Reuben's own coined 'Wolf Gift'? Why not describe the story of how Felix and the group were captured by Russian scientists who were intent on taking the Chrism for their own purposes? Why was I, the reader, just subjected to four hundred pages of drivel on how a golden boy was given the best thing in his life, when he'd never really known any sort of hardship at all? The characters say time and time again how they could tell the story in more depth, but they don't feel like it. It's essentially as though a minimum page count had been reached, and thus no more work was required.

Overall, I was highly disappointed with Mrs. Rice's reentry into the realm of supernatural fiction. I have adored her Vampire Chronicles books for years, and will continue to do so since they are rich tapestries of writing. But Wolf Gift does not and will not join that ranking, at least not in my mind. I sincerely feel like this was a book in the rough draft stages, something that needed a lot more work and perhaps a lot more guidance from the hand of a more skilled editor. Wolf Gift sincerely feels like a half-attempted try at a creature who is riding high in popular culture at the moment, with aspirations of bringing the author back into the limelight after a long hiatus. That, or perhaps Mrs. Rice's writing days are over, if this is what she considers a finished product. Where is the rich historical passages that I'm so used to? I don't need a text that's mired in today's world -- the constant talk of iPods was like a commercial for the stupid Apple product -- I'm looking for something to escape into, like Interview With The Vampire, or my particular favorite, Blood and Gold. The writing is still full of Mrs. Rice's beautiful descriptions, and the parts where Reuben hunts both animals and evil doers certainly is vivid and visceral, perhaps the one thing that I enjoyed in the book. But that in no way was able to make up for the lack of plot, the sluggish pace, and the poor character development.

It's a shame.

If you'd like a positive review of Anne Rice's Wolf Gift, check out my friend's review over on Soon Remembered Tales.