Who's afraid of a big bad wolf? Brian Asman's debut novel Good Dogs from Blackstone Publishing turns that question on its head and suggests it’s the wolves who have something to fear.
I find it fitting that I first cracked this volume during September's supermoon/harvest moon/partial lunar eclipse. Or perhaps not, as the novel quickly educates the reader, the real world of werewolves ain't like the movies and the lunar cycle holds no sway over them. The wolf curse is nothing more than a genetic lottery, bites don’t turn you, but silver will do a number on a werewolf. Good Dogs is a story about outcasts, found family, and the struggle to survive in a world you have to hide yourself from. Equal parts Near Dark and The Howling, the book follows Delia, a werewolf, and the crew of similarly afflicted weirdos that are her pack. All were taken in and given shelter by father figure and pack leader Hirsch. The family live peacefully on a large property just outside of San Diego. The pack consists of Delia’s lover Naughton, the irritating internet bro Joey, the misanthropic heavy metal outcast Linnae, and the live-laugh-love hippy Baby Girl.
The novel bit into me, pun intended, from the first few pages. Asman sets the stage over a century prior with a gripping, tense prologue that follows a lone mother protecting her children besieged by howling snarling lupine attackers one snowy night in 1857. Having read Asman’s bizarro-lite WTF haunted house novella, Man, Fuck This House, I was more than a little excited to dive into his first full-length novel. I expected the unexpected. Good Dogs is a different animal, darker, and far more serious. Asman can juxtapose ordinary domesticity with the deadly, grim and often darkly humorous. The Hirsch wolfpack, for all their rough edges and interpersonal hostilities, are just like any other family. This family just happens to rely on radio shock collars to keep them from leaving their property line some nights, lest they eat the neighbors.
That’s really where the trouble starts in Good Dogs, after a “night out,” our lycanthropic cast awakens to discover that during the night one of them attacked a human being and brought home leftovers. With a murder to cover up, the pack goes on the run. It should all be okay though, because Hirsch has a plan. He’s purchased an abandoned ghost town named Talbot and intends for it to be their new home. It's so isolated that their wolf-selves could run free without stumbling upon anyone to snack on. Hirsch sends most of the family out to set up the new digs while he and Naughton stay behind to dispose of the remains from the prior night’s transgressions.
The werewolf protagonists are deeply lovable, and flawed, each burdened with trauma. Repression is a recurring theme here, most of the werewolves carry guilt and shame about the deeds of their night selves, the family lost, and the pain they’ve endured. They live their lives trying to restrict and deny the lupine part of themselves. It’s a delightfully flexible metaphor likely to strike a chord with anyone who has ever felt like they just don’t belong in the “normal” world. There’s something more than a little punk rock in the group ethos of this ragtag group of survivors and the strength they derive from one another, despite the dysfunction. There’s freedom in being known and understood. There’s freedom in family. But the ultimate freedom so many of them lack is self-acceptance.
When Delia, Linnae, Joey, and Baby Girl arrive in Talbot, we learn that they’re not the only nor the scariest thing in this ghost town, and their problems are much bigger than any of them expected. Lars, the closest thing to a neighbor Talbot has, catches the wolfpack on the side of the road in their day forms and warns them about something in the abandoned town that makes people disappear. What kind of horror novel would it be if our heroes heeded the warning? Besides, they don’t have much choice. As the wolves wait in Talbot for their leader to return, they change night after night and wake up every morning with rising suspicions there was some truth to the legends and stories surrounding Talbot. Speaking of Talbot, Good Dogs is full of genre callouts, and fun easter eggs. Locations like Kessler Circle, and the town of Talbot made my horror-loving inner wolf howl with delight. (If you don’t get those references, consider this homework!)
Sure to feed your appetite for the grim and gruesome, Asman pulls off a kill scene with skill that makes sure every slash is felt. He takes great care in giving each murder scene a sort of symmetry. He threads in a heavy dose of backstory where we learn each victim's hopes and frustrations in the moments leading up to their demise. Yes, Asman delivers the gore and monsters. He details it all with the richly and satisfactorily macabre language you’d expect from a horror novel but what gives each kill that added impact is the way he links the victim’s desires to their final moment. No death is cheap here and the effect is suffocating and horrific. The history of Talbot is fleshed in interludes that cut into the main narrative, each narrator allows Asman to flex a little as he adopts a different voice for each entry, my favorite of the lot being the 1930s wise guy.
Good Dogs is exactly the kind of book you want to read this Halloween season, and I suspect the folks at Blackstone felt the same as they’ve decided to unleash the beasts on the world on October 1st.
I received an advance reading copy free in exchange for honest feedback and am leaving this review voluntarily. Below are links to purchase GOOD DOGS from two of my favorite St. Louis bookstores which Nocturne Books and Media is not affiliated with but firmly believes deserve your support.
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