Lora Hates Spam

by J. Esker Miller

This one is an interesting concept. Some sort of superwolf is causing havoc in a remote part of Alaska where freezing cold is part of daily life and travelling on dogsleds is common, as is looking out for polar bears. An animal expert is flown in and assigned to work out what is attacking both humans and animals, though he's been set up by the university he works for to take the trolling as a sort of Sasquach watcher.

There's a sudden flashback in history that covers several chapters, showing how the monster dogs developed and evolved. This in itself was interesting. The story then continues and the knowledge the reader has gained raises new questions about the behaviour of the dogs, who aren't actually wolves at all.

Things get dark and scary by about 40%. It occurred to me while reading this that animal Horror stories are more scary than those with totally imaginary monsters because it's just close enough to reality. As one might expect, there's substantial gore, though the author didn't get gratuitously descriptive and drag it out.

thought the ending was dragged out too long. There was a place where and ending would have been natural, but then a sort of separate adventure was added that I felt was not only unnecessary and foolish of the characters, but finished in an unsatisfying way, leaving me thinking, well what was the point of that?

Overall a gripping read, despite a couple of flaws.