The tall pine tree tops; bristling, waving fingers indicating the fulgent moon. There is a distant howling; picked up again and again in a nearing chorus. The chill air is perfumed with a melded musk of human and beast. The shadows growl . . .

That’s right, you’re in the country of the changed. Skinwalker-bound volumes are about to tell you their individual tales, inscribed with spattered blood, steaming gore, gnashing, foaming fangs and sweeping claws.

Lycanthropes, loup-garous, shapeshifters, Lycans, call them what you will, this is a tome dedicated to those who are hairy on the inside, those who have an argument with the moon on a regular basis. The Moon People. The Cursed Ones.

Though some may revel in such curse.

The werewolf has long been a favourite creature of mine from the black ark of the Horror pantheon.

Maybe it’s because of my affection for dogs? What percentage of cat lovers prefer vampires, I wonder?

Well, the appropriately named The Beast Within, from U.S. publishers Graveside Tales, gives us a bumper pack of twenty stories, 352 pages of transformations and werewolfery. It also holds an introduction by W.D. Gagliani and is dynamically illustrated, the cover and some interiors by the triple-threat editor.

I praised Joe Dante’s The Howling when it was released way back in 1980. The influence of it, and other, more recent, werewolf films is evident here of course, but variety is the central tenet of this anthology. Following The Howling (in which werewolves finally looked like werewolves) we had other fine werefilms such as Wolfen, An American Werewolf in London, The Company of Wolves, Wolf, Ginger Snaps and Dog Soldiers.

The scope of editor Matt Hults’s selection is commendable.

There is a clawful of novelettes in here as well.

Australia is represented by a Lee Battersby novelette that takes place in early settlement days.

These were-tracks range from a slaver ship in 1673 and colonial Australia, through the American old west, to a future virtual world of avatars, to a werewolf under a porch.

Feral werecats and leopards, gifted Bouda, a wereslug, corporate werecreatures, werespiders, bear, amphibians and marine creatures, a werewolf superhero, and, ah, more fond characters from my childhood play; wererats.

The stories that make this assemblage worthy?

I’ve created my own werehyenas for a story, so I was naturally attracted to Richard Farnsworth’s "Gift of the Bouda". This one has a Special Forces setting during the Somalia difficulties. Over thirteen and a quarter pages this story is laid down in an action packed style reminiscent of the writings of David Drake. Tightly written with a nice closing paragraph.

"Yard Sale" by Norma Lehr is not the usual take on the theme. Though it features a classic prop of werewolf transformation legend. Nicely understated. Its seven pages is the perfect length for the tale told across it.

I’ve played with werewolves in westerns as well, long ago. (Like werehyenas its another natural development, at least to the minds of dark fantasy writers.) William D. Carl has done this in his novelette "Desert Heart". The setting here makes this interesting reading. The other American west piece herein is Trent Hergenrader’s "Of Silver Bullets and Golden Teeth".

Fledgling authors could do far worse than reading as much of Gary A. Braunbeck as they can, for an education in writing fine speculative fiction. His featured novelette "Some Touch of Pity" is one of his Cedar Hill stories. It is about origins. Grounded in the lore and mythology of the Original People, this one is three stories encompassed in one framework. The Native American field is rich turf for works of dark fantasy, as writers from Jack London and Algernon Blackwood to Owl Goingback have proven.

"The Night John Fell" by Rick Moore is nicely surreal.

This volume also holds "Lure of The Wolf" by Belea T. Keeney. This story is a single, subtle bloom in moonlight. A restrained and pleasing piece.

The last work is by the editor himself; a rollicking bit of seafaring blood, thunder and the supernatural. It reads like an uncensored, unequal mix of Hodgson, Belknap Long and R.E. Howard. This one is almost worth the price of admission on its own. This story and the anthology entire reflect Matt Hults’s love of the were tribe.

Though a number of the stories resort to formula in regards to the tempting battle of the monsters approach, all in all this is an interesting bag of shifting shapes. Try and drop it in the river at your own risk.

(This publication was read for review as a PDF.)