Reviewed by Colleen Wanglund, MoreHorror.com
Master of the Hunt: A Werewolf Novel' by Nickel Crow
Red Chimera Publishing 2011
Available as a Kindle E-book through Amazon.com.
Harrison Dale has been kidnapped and brought to a private tropical island with a handful of other men. Kept in cages, they soon learn the reason for their predicament. Harrison and the other men are meant to be hunted. They have been brought to the island—owned by brothers Nathanial and Wayne--by people seeking revenge. The hunted will be trained to survive on the island and their hunters will be trained in big game hunting before the main event is due to take place.
Harrison, however, has been brought to the island for sport. Nathanial has a werewolf hide on his trophy wall and younger brother Wayne wants one, as well. Harrison has learned a measure of control over his strange abilities and refuses to give the brothers what they want. He knows that if the beast is allowed to surface it will mean death for everyone on the island, no exceptions.
I was never the biggest fan of werewolf fiction. Some is good, but a lot of it is the same old thing or mixed with paranormal romance. Werewolves in fiction have become a lot like vampires. Nickel Crow’s novel really surprised me. Master of the Hunt is a very smartly done story that is brutal and downright gritty. Crow doesn’t pussyfoot around, getting right into the meat of the story early on and keeping a nice pace even when flashing back to Harrison’s past when filling the reader in on how he ended up on the island. Character development is well-done, for the most part. They all felt like real people to me—and most of them I wouldn’t want to know in reality.
I felt sorry for one of the hunters—a girl who was raped—but I also felt sympathy for one of the other hunted men, Kramer. He was a pretty reasonable guy whose vicious ex-wife wanted him dead for leaving her. Darius another of the hunted was sympathetic, as well, but got on my nerves for all the whining he did. Brothers Nathanial and Wayne were hateful enough but felt more one-dimensional to me than the others. I like Harrison a lot; he seems like a decent man who gets caught up in things he has no control over—like his conversion to werewolf. The reader never learns how he became what he is, but it seems Harrison doesn’t know how it happened, either. I hope to eventually learn Harrison’s secrets. I also appreciated the less-than-predictable but very gruesome ending.
I recommend Master of the Hunt and look forward to reading more from Nickel Crow.