Maneater

Thomas Emson’s novel, Maneater, is not your typical werewolf yarn. At least not in today’s urban romantasy saturated market. Maneater is part horror, party mystery, and part urban fantasy.

This isn’t a world populated by lots of paranormal creatures, and it is not a vampires verses werewolves story. That is not to say there aren’t some very cliché bits, just different cliché’s than those that are the standard in this literary era.

Maneater, the titular character Laura Greenacre, is apparently the last surviving werewolf. This is a result of a war waged by the rival werewolf clan. The rival clan hunted the Greenacre’s for thousands of years and even gave up the ability to shift in their lust to end the werewolf lines. The rival clans, of course, started out as two brothers who chose opposite sides of a power struggle and whose families then spent thousands of years feuding.

This entry in the ages long battle between the clans results from Laura’s attempt to avenge the murder of her parents at the hands of the current leader of the rival clan. The murders happened when Laura was very young and thus she grew up with no knowledge or guidance in the ways of werewolves. The rest of the cast of characters include the son of the rival leader, the police, and a few random people involved with Laura or the rival clan.

The main plot is basically a rehash of every other feud plotline. The sides gradually learn more about each other, or rather more information is revealed to the reader, and it all leads to a major climactic battle where good triumphs over evil. Or something close to that anyway. One side is clearly evil the other has a few redeeming factors, but is hardly blameless.

Mixed into all this is at least one completely useless subplot, whose existence I never really figured out. This subplot involves a rapist, and in my opinion really did nothing to advance the story or in any way influence a major character. This subplot honestly felt like nothing more than a way to fill up some space.

All the characters are formulaic. Emson never got much past picking a major character type and giving each character a physical description. Beyond that each character could be replaced by any of about a dozen similar characters from different works. Emson also has the annoying tendency to write scenes of gratuitous male sexual fantasy without much real skill.

This novel, despite its general lack of originality, was a fun, fast read. If you can look past the several glaring flaws and don’t expect anything ground breaking or mind blowing it could be worth a read. I give it a 2.5/5.