“Most people think of Special Operations soldiers as cowboys; Rambo-types that bust through doors then kick ass and take names. There is an element of truth to that, but the violent actions on contact usually come after painstaking planning and exhaustive rehearsals; preparation that writes every movement you will make into a script of muscle memory. Success on the battlefield doesn’t just happen.”

“I glutted myself quickly in the open body cavity, as werewolves came to punish my trespass.”

“It was just the nightmare. I never ate my kid, or my wife, except in the nightmare, because I left before it could happen.”

Tales of Were creatures have been around at least since the days of the ancient Greeks. Though not as prevalent as the ranks of vampire and zombie stories, the shapeshifting genre is an interesting and rewarding realm to enter.

In the field (or forest) of werewolves alone, many classic works and treatments have been conceived.

So, what does Richard Farnsworth bring to the reader with Gift of the Bouda?

Automatic weapons, werewolves and werehyenas, a new kind of guerrilla war on terror.

“Special Forces owned the night.”

Wrong, in this instance.

The opening eight pages of the prologue set the trend.

Rapid fire with professionally detailed military action. You are there. Quite frankly this is a fun read. The story comes at you like a really good “B” movie, if “B” movies were really good which the majority, these days, are not. Full Eclipse comes to mind, the best scene of which was a brief shot in a zoo of a beautiful blue-eyed White Wolf. More recently, and closer to the mark here, there is the 2010 film Hyenas. The less said about that one the better. Most “Were” films fail to even approach the dark fairy tale spookiness of the bears sequence in 1946’s Road to Utopia.

As his Special Forces unit is decimated in an East African assignment, Captain John Rogers is bitten and infected by a creature in the form of a werehyena, a Somali arms dealer possessed of the gift of the Bouda.

When he gets back to the States Rogers finds that he too has been gifted with the Bouda’s unique curse. That ends his marriage, his “normal life,” and distances him from the rest of humanity. This book, however, does not cover those matters in any immediate detail for, after Somalia, the next time we see Rogers he has pretty much come to terms with his own curse/gift and is working in Reno Nevada as a skydiving instructor and a bouncer at a strip club.

“He found the place where Mal had died. The blood, the urine, the viscera had all been swept up but their ghost-like after images of smell remained in the gravel.”

Fairly quickly, Rogers involves himself in the kidnapping of a friend and comes into savage conflict with two werewolf clans over the ownership of an ancient book.

The transformation scenes and “Were” lore are handled nicely. There is also “Were” martial arts. But, seriously, some thought has been given to how such creatures would fight.

The machismo meter is set high in this novel, with one-upmanship and some, quite literal, territorial pissing contests. The author even makes a couple of jangling-spurs western references in passing and quotes a Clint Eastwood character.

“The knife rested at the edge of the concrete beside a bloody half footprint she had left that reminded Celeste of the mark a dog’s paw would make.”

This novel has its origin in Farnsworth’s short story of the same name, which can be found in The Beast Within, an anthology from Graveside Tales.

“If Pack-tricide wasn’t a word, it would be.

Soon.”

Farnsworth has made the fantastical elements of his story a metaphor of returned soldiers and their problems of integrating back into society. Whether the author intended it or not, this novel could also be interpreted as a further extrapolation of the Us and Them, you’re either with us or “agen” us, mentality. The conflicts between two branches of humanity sharing the same trunk of the tree. The demonising of other races who are, under the surface, inherently “us,” and the beast that lies waiting just under that same surface.

But this is an American therianthropic pulp fiction, folks. You won’t get any deep analysis or ruminating metaphor. That wouldn’t suit this briskly paced book. These “Were” characters don’t romp in purple patches. They hunt, “mark,” rend, and kill in the desert wilds, a biker bar, a crappy trailer, a luxury casino – just about anywhere they damned well please. In a tried and true formula our hirsute hero’s wife and child are taken captive by underworld werewolves, and he goes after them. Action ensues. Farnsworth gives the anti-hero a Metallica soundtrack as he takes out a bar full of werewolf bikies known as “The Fifty Sons.” Try and forget the politics, try not to look any deeper than the sweeping claw wounds of a “Were” onslaught. Kick back and enjoy the fictional carnage.

Some readers may not appreciate the alpha male aspects of the novel, but if it finds its audience, they will enjoy this adventure in therianthropy.

When they make the movie, here’s hoping it’s not a Lou Diamond Phillips clusterfuck.

“‘A Foreign land is a land of wolves.’”