Wolves

by D. J. Molles

[Beth C.]

The country as we had always known it was no more - instead, it had become a lawless place, where anything is for the taking and everything is built upon the backs of slaves. To get those slaves, the slavers - Los Lobos to some - killed all the men, raped and killed the women, and took whoever they might get a price for. In this world lives Huxley - an educated man, a father, and a man destined to be an outlaw.

This book is in no way a sci-fi/fantasy book. Instead, it's a post-apocalyptic cowboy novel that is absolutely brutal and dark and twisted and horrifyingly redemptive. There is no quarter given in this book - it slams you upside the head and forces you to bear witness to the cruelty that man does in the name of power, and sometimes even in the name of love.

Huxley, whose family was torn apart by slavers, is rescued by another man as he's on the brink of death in the Wastelands. Together, these two broken individuals form a partnership of sorts, based on "blood and death". Eventually - as might be expected - that blood and death begins to spiral around the men, leaving a trail of bodies and destruction.

This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is well-written. It's spareness serves to punctuate the brokenness of everyone within the story, and it won't be a novel that will be easy to read or easy to walk away from. It will probably go down as one of the best novels of the year, and it will be a deserved honor.