From archive (archive)
Subject: WOLF OF SHADOWS by Whitley Streiber
From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Date: 16 Jun 86 06:14:13 SDT




		     WOLF OF SHADOWS by Whitley Strieber
		       Sierra Club/Knopf, 1985, $9.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

     This is, unlikely as it sounds, a juvenile about nuclear winter.  And
it's told from the point of view of a wolf who is leading his pack from
Minnesota down to Arkansas after a nuclear war.  A woman (who happened to
have done research on wolves the year before and so gained Wolf of Shadows'
trust) flees from the city with her two daughters just after the bombs are
dropped.  One daughter dies from radiation burns almost immediately, but the
woman and the other daughter follow, and eventually join, the wolf pack.

     Strieber has co-authored (with James Kunetka) another nuclear exchange
novel, WAR DAY.  In that one, only three cities were bombed, not enough to
cause a nuclear winter.  Apparently this novel grew out of a question he was
asked by a reader of WAR DAY: "What about the animals?"  So the telling of
the novel from Wolf of Shadows' point of view makes some sort of sense.
Unfortunately, the result seems to be a novel that is unrelentingly
depressing.  While it is true that there is little to be cheerful about in a
nuclear winter, the telling of the story from the wolf's point of view means
that we never find out anything about why the war started, how big it was,
what happened to everyone else.  Yes, it's true that the average survivor
wouldn't know EVERYTHING, but they would have some idea of what was going
on.

     Perhaps I expect too much of this book.  It is, after all, aimed at a
younger audience.  But I also think it provides too fatalistic a view--the
point-of-view character cannot do anything to influence the course of events
that is destroying his world.  None of his species can.  For the reader to
identify with the point-of-view character is to get the feeling that the
reader can't either--not just can't as a child, but can't ever.  But people
obviously CAN have an effect--people are all that can have an effect.  WOLF
OF SHADOWS doesn't deal with that.


					Evelyn C. Leeper
					...ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl
					(or ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl)

From archive (archive)
Subject: NATURE'S END by Strieber & Kunetka
From: ecl@mtgzy.UUCP (e.c.leeper)
Organization: AT&T Information Systems Labs, Holmdel NJ
Date: 29 Aug 86 23:01:26 SDT




	      NATURE'S END by Whitley Strieber and James Kunetka
			    Warner, 1986, $17.95.
		      A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

     The faults that I found in Strieber's WOLF OF SHADOWS are magnified
here--but then this is about five times as long.  It's preachy.,  God, is it
preachy!  Every ecological disaster warned against in the past ten years is
in this book.  Though it takes place forty years from now, there has
evidently NOT been a major earthquake in California however, and I find the
hi-tech aspects unlikely in a world as chaotic as Strieber and Kunetka
describe.  Little continuity flaws also mar the book--a character rescues
his data disks by putting them in his wallet and, even though all his
clothes are burned off, he still has the disks.  There's also a secret
enclave of genetically-enhanced super-intelligent children.  (This really is
a "kitchen-sink" novel.)

     Perhaps the problem is that Strieber is still trying to write horror
novels which rely more on emotion instead of science fiction novels which
rely on intellect.  Taken as a horror novel, this isn't bad, but as science
fiction, it doesn't make it for me.


					Evelyn C. Leeper
					(201) 957-2070
					ihnp4!mtgzy!ecl
					mtgzy!ecl@topaz.rutgers.edu