Review: Bitten

Summary: Eight years after the events in Full Wolf Moon, hunters Maxwell Pierce and David Alma Curar are traveling the country, hunting down the Beast. The Beast is a silver-haired creature that forces its way into our world every night of the full moon. It incarnates in a Chosen and is drawn to the terror present in its prey. Max and David’s first hunt is successful, but they quickly learn that the rules of their dangerous game have changed. Incarnations are turning up dead, eviscerated, and they have no idea why. More, they have no idea how. Staying in the game could cost them their lives, but what other choice is there?

Commentary: The first four pages or so of K.L. Nappier’s Bitten had me a little worried. There were some “God-knows-whats” and “no-see-ums” in her language that lent a whimsical tone to her style. Whimsy did not jive very well with the slogging-through-muck, supposed-to-be-scary, serious setting she was describing. This conflict left me concerned that for the whole book I would be torn between a light tone telling a dark story. Thankfully, beyond the first few pages, the whimsy vanished. Vanished entirely, in fact, as the action quickly ramped up and I was introduced to the Beast.

I am not familiar with Nappier’s previous work, so the Beast mythos was new to me. And I found myself reading on so that I could understand the rules involved in her take on the werewolf legends. Hunters David and Max had managed, within the first chapter, to bring an “incarnation” of the Beast. Usually, one stops once the werewolf is dead. But not in this universe. The Beast is less a creature and more of a demon that possesses humans. And those humans can be saved, but only under certain conditions. Max and David were trying to save the human that lived inside the Beast they’d killed, and that’s a mission they’ve dedicated their lives to.

Bitten is fairly non-stop action. Scenes of gore and violence are written with excellent visceral visuals. But there is more to the book than just that. About half-way through, Max takes a good long look at his life. He’s getting older. And as a reader, I was drawn into his dilemma about a life wasted, loveless, and harsh. He began to take on depth as a character and became more than just an appropriate gun-wielding apparatus. Added to this was the subtext about addiction and atonement. The ways in which the various characters deal with addiction makes them seem real and adds weight to a book that would otherwise be the functional equivalent of a bad Michael Bay movie. These issues live below the surface and drive the characters. The book offers no easy solutions, nor should it.

My one quibble with Bitten, however, is the ending. And I do mean the ending, the last 5 pages or so. The resolution to what had thus far been a tumultuous journey filled with death and heartache felt deus ex machina. I can understand why the author wanted to go that route, but I felt ripped off. It’s also sad for me, because so many other things in the book worked so well.

Despite my disappointment at the choice of ending, I still think Bitten is a good read and an interesting interpretation of werewolf mythology. There were plenty of side characters that I enjoyed, and the main characters developed into individuals that I could believe, by the end. There’s room left for a sequel, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see one, and I’ll definitely make a note to pick it up, should it appear.

Lora Friedenthal

Bitten, by K. L. Nappier
Sequel to Full Wolf Moon
Published by: Double Dragon Publishing (August 2007)
ISBN-10: 1-55404-475-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-55404-475-7
Genre: Supernatural/Horror – Suspense/Thriller