Author: Anne Rice
Published: Knopf, February 2012
Genre: Fantasy/Horror/Thriller
Rating: 4/5
Last summer, I embarked on my second journey of reading vampire novels. As much as I hate to admit it, The Twilight Saga was my first taste of vampire fiction. While I knew about Anne Rice's famous Vampire Chronicles (who doesn't?) I had never once picked them up. Long story short, after reading the first few pages of Interview with a Vampire Rice had gained a new fan. One day, at the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku, I saw the eyes of a wolf staring back at me from the cover of a paperback. The Wolf Gift came home with me that day.
Rueban Golding is a reporter on a assignment to write about the Nideck mansion on the rugged coast of Northern California. As he makes his way through the great mansion and all its treasures he begins to see the house as his fate. Being in that mansion will change his fate. A chance encounter will alter his body, his understanding, his relationships, and the existence he has called reality. Rueban seeks salvation in his soul as he attempts to find a balance between man and wolf. He has been given The Wolf Gift.
Rice touches on the human instinct to survive and protect, even if it means murder. While Rueban is a werewolf when he kills Rice bridges the link between animal and human. Somewhere, in modern civilization, man has lost the instincts that once helped to govern our lives. Or, is it buried somewhere, deep in the the humanity we have developed with civilization?
Readers will taste the setting of Rueban's world with with the eloquent prose Rice has once more rendered with her detailed descriptions. Rueban is a character that you can imagine standing beside you as you read the pages of his story. For those who revel in the legend and lore of the werewolf this is a novel that you must read.
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