1 of 5 stars

There’s not a whole lot to write home about in this book. After reading it, I didn’t have a bad taste in my mouth, and I was going to give it two stars, but then I tried to find a redeeming quality or something I liked about the book.

The characters were either pure evil or a half hearted, scattershot attempt at giving them depth. However, my main issue with this book was character motivation. The reasons behind anyone doing anything just don’t hang together – it’s as if the author had loads of ideas for “cool” scenes or themes he wanted to incorporate and then shoved them in. That led to a halting plot with bad pacing, and inconsistent themes and messages. I wasn’t sure if Percy was trying to say something about the current state of extremism and the war on terror and fell short, or if he was just trying to write a badass werewolf book and hobbled it with half-baked commentary. Either way, it didn’t work for me.

The concept was OK, I guess, but poorly executed. Again, I didn’t dislike it after reading it, but after thinking about what I did like I couldn’t come up on anything. Almost as if the book transformed while I wasn’t looking.