Into the Mouth of the Wolf
Writer Joshua Dagon has created an original, supernatural allegory with his novel Into the Mouth of the Wolf, and for perhaps one of the first times, has written about a gay werewolf. The fact that werewolves exist so casually and naturally in Dagon's world makes the reader believe the events unfolding in the story might actually be true!
A well-written and intelligent tale, "Into the Mouth of the Wolf" is the story of Russell Shepard, a rich young man who, when we first meet him, has brought a one-night stand to his father's cabin in the woods. Instead of getting his date into bed, Russell watches in horror as he is snatched away by a wolf, ripped to shreds, and left for dead. Russell, too, has been bitten by the wolf, but survives and begins to transform. He is taken away to a research site where is studied intently by a team of researchers, resolved to find a way to tame the beast. What the researchers don't realize is that once Russell is bitten by the wolf, there's no way he'll be the person he once was.
Dagon wisely chooses to write Russell from the first person point-of-view, often times using a stream-of-consciousness technique, but not to overbearing effect. He also injects a lot of humor into the story, as Russell doesn't try to take what's going on too seriously. His character is also strongly attracted to Curt (his straight werewolf friend), but Dagon doesn't make Russell out to be a leering sex fiend. The allegory is that the werewolf outbreak has now turned into an epidemic, and Dagon is comparing this to the AIDS epidemic and the gay lifestyle in general. Werewolves, if they were sexual at all, were all pretty much straight in the past; Dagon has bought them out of the closet, so to speak.
Breur Media Corporation (2008). $18.95. 471 pages. Available whereever books are sold or online through Amazon.
For additional info on the book and its author, see:
www.JoshuaDagon.com