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 Pretty Good! Apr 06, 2008
This book is well written and keeps you interested through the end. Very good read.
awesome book Dec 31, 2007
This book is great. author really took out time to have great knowledge of the information written about.
0 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Ghastly Good Read Aug 27, 2007
If you like scary books, buy this one. You will not regret it. Great read.
2 of 2 found the following review helpful:
"Jaws" Hits the Woods Aug 25, 2007
Was pleasantly surprised by this little book. It is essentially a fantasy/horror novel that sets itself apart from the typical Stephen King summer read by being NOT tediously overlong and overwritten. "Year of the Dogman" actually gets up and MOVES. It is a fast and absorbing read and, while it didn't really scare the "bejeebies" out of this reviewer, it did provide for some good atmospheric creeps and chills. In style, this work is far closer to Peter Benchley's "Jaws" than to anything from, say, King, Koontz, or James Herbert.
So what are we dealing with here? Is this a werewolf type story or what? Actually, coming to the book "cold", so to speak, it might (or might not) be a bit confusing to the "uninitiated". Before you read it, you might want to visit the library and/or a local bookstore to get copies of Linda Godfrey's books "The Beast of Bray Road" and "Hunting the American Werewolf", or B.M. (Bart) Nunnelly's new "Strange Kentucky" (Whitechapel Press) and give them a read. A trip to You Tube to check out Steve Cook's
video "The Legend" will also be quite helpful in "setting the stage"...AND the mood for this little literary adventure.
The "dogman" is a term used in the paranormal-cryptozoological world (along with "manwolf', "mandog", and "wolfman") to describe creatures seen by many people over many generations here, yes, here in the modern-day world. These seem to be appearances (apparitions?) of things that resemble gigantic dogs or wolves and which have a disturbing habit of standing up and walking around on two legs. Some of them appear to people as bipedal quadrupeds...4-leggers walking on two...while others show up as creatures with humanlike torsos (shoulders included), human-like arms (and even legs), and even with human-like hands and feet.
Nobody knows what these things are, but they range around Kentucky and Ohio, and Texas, and are thick as bees around a honey tree in Michigan and Wisconsin. American Indian legends view them as spirit beings("walkers between worlds"), or as "guardians" of hallowed places. The notion of their being "werewolves" in the classical sense of that word is little regarded and nobody around the country has been pursued by any lynch mobs convinced they were evil "changers". The phenomenon is just a nice, delicious mystery.
Several years ago, in Michigan, a musician named Steve Cook decided to have some Halloween fun and decided to use the local "dogman" legend as the basis for a spooky song for the season. He recorded a ditty that was weird sounding, and with a narrative story-telling quality that made it seem everything in the song was true. It was expected this would have short-run local popularity, but the song took hold and has become a VERY enduring folk song in the Great Lakes area. Right up there with Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".
Now enter Frank Holes, Jr. This lit teacher (a great fan of "The Legend")
decided to write a horror novel based both on the north country dogman/manwolf stories, as well as (somewhat) on Steve Cook's song itself.
The result of that labor is "Year of the Dogman" , a self-published success with a "wowser' of a cover.
Internally, the book is, as I stated earlier, something somewhat in the mode of "Jaws"...and that's good. Holes has to walk a constrictive walk here...he can't play too fast and loose with either the legend, or "The Legend"...and he pulls this feat off rather well. The book is not character driven, at least in the conventional sense. It really has no main character or central protagonist...unless it is THE BEAST ITSELF. There are humans IN the story, a county sheriff and a local schoolteacher with a strange metaphysical linkage to the dog-thing, yet neither of these truly rise to the stature of main characters. Supporting characters, to be sure, and purveyors of information to the reader, but not really main characters. Again, that spot is basically held down by the creature itself.
The book is basically a series of violent vignettes ; fictionalized encounters (sometimes with bad outcomes) between the beast and the locals, all thematically linked to a "reason" the dogman has for rampaging his way through the area hinterland (and even suburban) society.
It is also worth noting that all of these encounters ring true in the telling and sound like things reported by "regular folks" when they experience highly IRREGULAR occurrences. Holes is quite good at making the fabricated events seem real.
One final reason I so enjoyed this book was that it makes for a WONDERFUL change from the endless indunations of romantic supernatural drivel that has store shelves groaning out there with stories of studly-stud werewolf hero hunks fighting to save big-bosomed lasses from demons from beyond, or brooding, misunderstood, bad-boy good vampires trying to "do the right thing" by the mortal women they love...and on and on (yecch).
This book eschews all that maudlin malarkey and gets down and dirty. Likely would make a pretty fair t.v. movie if push came to shove.
I'd watch it.
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