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Hunter From The Woods, The (2014)

by Robert McCammon(Favorite Author)

4.15 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

1491582359 (ISBN13: 9781491582350)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Brilliance Audio

series

Michael Gallatin

review 1: The Hunter from the Woods are a collections of novellas and short stories centered around the werewolf Michael Gallatin. The tales take place before and after his initial appearance in the novel The Wolf's Hour.The tales are fast paced and dwell mainly in the mental and emotional state of Gallatin then in any action sequences, though there are plenty of those.Another good and satisfying read from McCammon.
review 2: The Hunter from the Woods fills in the back story to the protagonist of Wolf's Hour, Michael Gallatin. What you have are six stories, 2 of which are short story length and three are novellas and they follow in chronological order. First up is "The Great White Way" where a young Michael Gallatin is working in a circus in the vast interior of Russia.... more The story follows his ill-fated liaison with one of the circus performers. 3/5 The second is called "The Man From London" and follows on some months after the events of the first story. The story provides the background as to how the young Gallatin ends up in the British Secret Service and meets his mentor. I particularly enjoyed the aerosan chase that takes place toward the end of the story. Aerosans are not that well-known outside of military history buffs and their appearance showed that RM had done his research. 5/5Next up is "Sea Chase" which takes place a few months before World War 2 where Gallatin, now an agent of British Intelligence, is tasked with ensuring the safe extraction of a German scientist. This is the first novella length story and again the historical detail is well-handled. 5/5"The Wolf and the Eagle" was the strongest story in my opinion. Here Gallatin has been assigned to provide reconnaisance work in North Africa during 1942, perfect work for a man of his abilities. Needless to say that events don't go according to plan and Gallatin finds himself stranded in the desert with a German Pilot for company. Both recognise each other as men of action and despite being enemies the pair bond. It was also commendable that RM recognized the pilot as being an honourable man as in many of these stories and in Wolf's Hours the Germans are portrayed as stereotypical one-dimensional evil Nazis. This is the second novella length story. 5/5"The Room At the Bottom of the Stairs" is the final novella length story. The story takes place shortly before the fall of Berlin. Again RM did his homework and we get a good idea of the atmosphere in Berlin when Hitler's regime was in its death throes. My two gripes with this story were that Galltin's mission didn't ring true and that it exposes what I believe is RM's weakness which are sex/love scenes. None of the scenes are explicit but just that they read more like a cross-between a bodice-ripper and a Carry On film. 4/5Finally, we have "Death of a Hunter" the final short story and in my opinion the weakest. RM established Gallatin has a sort of lycanthrope version of James Bond. In this story, its a few years after the war and Gallatin is pushing 50 and no longer the young wolf/man. The villlains of the piece are agents of some showdowy crime syndicate similar to SMERSH and indeed an account of Gallatin's post-WW2 adventures are in a similar vein to the over-the-top James Bond villains/organizations. This story didn't gel with me as the rest of the stories all fit in with a historical framework where as this one appears more of a flight of fancy. It would have been far more interesting to either have Gallatin posted in Cold War Berlin working against his native Countrymen or hunting down some Nazi War Criminal or to set it in Russia with Gallatin back in his motherland and embroiled in some Soviet intrigues. 2/5RM has long been my favourite author. Its a long time since I read Wolf's Hour, probably 20 years now, but it is one of the books I do intend to read again at some point. I don't remember much of the detail but I do remember thinking it was a great read. One of the things that did stay with me was how well handled and described the transformation scenes were and the same is true of this collection. RM is a fantastic storyteller but he also deserves credit for getting the period details largely correct and doing an excellent job when it comes to portraying British or Russian viewpoints. Overall a good collection and I'll also say that Vincent Chong's artwork on the jacket and the interior is fantastic. less

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