A New Take on Werewolves- a Mix of Stephen King’s old school horror, with Story Form like John Crichton’s newer material- You Can’t Go Wrong With This Halloween Seasonal Read (anytime, really)
by Jeneane Vanderhoof
With Halloween around the corner I was looking for a book to read that would put me in the “spirit” of the spooky holiday. So, when I came across a series called Werepets Unleashed, the first book, Tamed, I crossed my fingers, opened it up, and within minutes knew the book was the right one for me- and exactly what I desired.
The author Douglas R. Brown brings to the page a dystopian world in which a corporation has found a tribe of people who can change into werewolves. Capturing some and eradicating many others, they bring “samples” back to America where they will create more and offer them up for sale- as household pets. Of course, they are also used for underground fighting rings and hunting their own who go astray and are no longer docile- because there are differences to these werewolves, introduced by the corporation.
First off the werewolves are not allowed to change at will, at least, most of them. The corporation inserts a tag into their body which keeps the werewolf in its form at all times. Also, although some suspect this to be true no one knows that the corporation kidnaps unlucky individuals, mostly from the homeless population, to change into these “new pets” that are then beaten into submission, so that they “behave” and do as they are told in their new homes.
Of course, these pets cost a lot of money, the investment into the initial large payment, along with their yearly maintenance, and all fees associated, getting well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars spent per werepet. Plus there is the fact that many of the owners seem to lose their lives (when having one in the home), which is then covered up by the corporation, explained away as an accident, anything other than what really happened- that they were attacked by their pet. Because, in fact, this pet is really no pet at all, but a struggling kidnapped human inside a deformed body that no longer can understand who they were, what happened, and what they are now.
When ambulance driver and medical technician Christine attends to a house call and wanderers into a werewolf attack, the owner dead, her partner’s body mauled, and then, gone, even though she is wounded she does not tell anyone of her injuries. When changes begin to occur Christine has no idea what is happening to her- however, all the werepets are drawn to her, strangely obsessed with the woman (which has never happened before). The reason behind this is that all the werepets are male, this sex, is easier to tame and use as pets in a human population. So when Christine changes, it is not just the male werepets after her, it is also the corporation, as they don’t want a female ruining their well-laid plans. Plus, since Christine became a werewolf without help from the corporation, no chips had been inserted inside her neck and that means she can shift, at will, when she learns how to control it.
Initially, the corporation sends their best human hunters and werewolves of their own after Christine. But, when one of their best hunters, Aiden, learns the truth about the werewolves and the corporation’s biggest secret, that they are all humans who shift into this form- his allegiances shift, knowing that he has killed many of them and is guilty now, of murder, he wants to help bring down the very man and the corporation that raised him after his own parents were killed in a werepet attack when he was young. Because now Aiden knows his beloved pet Rufus (a werepet) wasn’t the one who did this to his family, he knows that his father knew the truth, that with the removal of the chip inserted into the werepet, they would once again become human, if only for a short while. In essence, the corporation kidnaps a person twice, the second time, the worst of all. Because after the corporation takes a human they don’t kill him, they let him get ravaged by a werewolf, suffer through the change, and then lock them in this inhuman form forever- because the chips are meant to stay.
Will Aiden be able to save Christine from the corporation and aid her in learning how to survive herself in werewolf form? Will Christine be caught by the corporation- and, if so, will they kill her or keep her with some wicked plan on how to make whatever life they give her a nightmare to live? Or will the pair be able to take out the corporation, and let everyone know the truth about their “pets”? And, if they make the public aware of this, will they even care?
Douglas R. Brown’s first in the Werepet series, Tamed, will draw you in, rip you up, and make you want more- just like most werepets end up doing to their owners. I had a hard time putting this book down, all the excitement and suspense contained on the pages. It’s a creative tour de force- mixing how corporations take advantage and do horrendous things to make money, a different kind of werewolf story than any readers are used to, bringing werepets into mainstream society and into people’s homes and the danger that those that do are so blind to. How people will believe anything when they want something badly enough and that a werewolf can be a pet- Because even if tamed for a while, in the end, this is still a vicious animal that society knows little about, and that doggie doors are so easily substituted for werepet ones- that anyone who bought this “pet” thought, in the end, it would be okay- highlights how society can have the wool pulled over their own eyes and pull it even further themselves.
A definite five-star read!