Anne Rice made vampires cool, modern and downright sexy long before the likes of True Blood or Twilight. In The Wolf Gift, she turns her attention to another supernatural staple: the werewolf.
Young journalist Reuben Golding visits a spectacular mansion outside of San Francisco, where he meets a fascinating older woman, brimming with sexuality and old world charm. They bond over the house and the personal effects of her mysterious uncle, tragically disappeared of late. Later that same evening, the house is broken into, the woman is killed by robbers and Reuben is bitten and released by what he believes at first to be a large wolf-like animal. Rather than a curse, Reuben begins to see his transformation as a gift, giving him power and strength to seek out evil and right wrongs, a violent contrast to his writing as a reporter.
Anne Rice's take on werewolf mythology is written with a compelling modernity. While the dialogue at times feels archaic, The Wolf Gift is contemporary in a way that her Vampire Chronicles never was. This "man wolf," as Reuben dubs himself, is fully of the new world, using an iPhone, Twitter and Facebook with deftness and charm. Reuben's own perilous journey from a bewildered young adult to an increasingly self-assured man wolf is itself informed by our own common cultural knowledge of cinema and literature. The Wolf Gift is a strong--and welcome--return to the monster mythology that made Anne Rice famous in the first place. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor