Jeffrey J. Mariotte ‘Season of the Wolf’ Review

Written by: Drake Morgan

Season of the Wolf by Jeffrey Mariotte really intrigued me with its environmental theme. I haven’t seen horror really tackling the nightmarish changes humanity is bringing on by our current course of action. This novel was different. Alex Converse, a wealthy man with a conscience (I should have paused right there), comes to a small Colorado town to make a documentary. He wants to highlight the environmental changes from global warming, but discovers monstrous wolves instead. It sounded like a fascinating Man VS. Nature story with grand possibilities. Are the wolves fighting back at last? Is Nature turning on Man just as savagely as we have turned on it? I was brimming with questions as I plunged in.

By page seventeen, I was already drifting. A character closes a chapter with the line “Yes sir Mr. Mayor, you got that right.” Did he really just say that? The characters were flat and the dialogue staggered under the weight of cliché. There is even a crack about Al Gore. We even have the beyond predictable scene where a guy backhands a woman “so hard she tasted blood.” Can we think of nothing more creative than beating women? This is a story where men are men and women are women in all the worst ways possible.

There is an interesting theory in the novel that does involve actual science concerning the wolves. The monsters are hybrid wolves that have migrated south because of global warming. The narrative does examine climate change and it seems as if the author was trying to make a statement about the destruction we are bringing on.

Everything just got lost somewhere. There are too many characters, too many side bar stories, too many time shifts, and not enough cohesion in the end. Instead of digging into what could have been an intense thematic story, the author falls back on violent brutality and gore.  A real lost opportunity with this one.

Rating: 2/5