Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2024 October 18 • Friday

Michael Gallatin is a pretty typical male power fantasy action hero. Super smart, super handsome, a super stud, worldly and multi-lingual with a mysterious past—his father was probably no less than Rasputin, just in case you weren't already impressed—he's the only chance the Allies have, several years into World War Two, of stopping some nefarious Nazi plot that might like totally derail D-Day.

And so Michael Gallatin leaves his remote castle home and parachutes into occupied France to meet up with the Resistance and figure out what evil stuff is going on and, you know, deal with it. Because the primary fantasy in these stories is high-level competence.

It would be a fairly standard men's adventure story if it weren't for one other little detail: Michael Gallatin is also a werewolf.

The book is Robert McCammon's The Wolf's Hour. Let's go.

So this book was a lot of fun. Michael Gallatin can transform whenever he wants to. Full moons are not relevant. He can do full or partial wolf. He's totally wolfed out when we first meet him but soon thereafter, while fighting with a Nazi assassin and about to lose and be killed, he goes half wolf to turn the tables.

The World War Two story line alternates with Gallatin's origin story, how he became a werewolf and was raised by a werewolf family/community after his human family is murdered.

Both story lines are equally engaging and thrilling and McCammon is not shy or reserved. He seems to love what he's doing and his enthusiasm is contagious. There's constant action, sex and intrigue. There's even a werewolf version of the John Henry myth and an umpteenth reiteration of The Most Dangerous Game—but this time it's on a moving train with the hunter pursuing his prey through a series of death-trap train cars.

There are page turners and then there's this book. Robert McCammon might be the most unabashed writer I've ever encountered and I wouldn't mind if there were fifty books about Michael Gallatin. This is an evolution and expansion of pulp fiction and men's adventure tropes in the best way.

The first line is "The war went on".