Maneater [Paperback]

Maneater is infused with vice: greed, and power and Emson flexes his literary muscle to convey just that. He's plausibly set forth a tale of two ancient bloodlines warring for countless centuries, waging their battle in flashbacks and in contemporary London. The chronicle of Laura Greenacre, the last full-blooded werewolf of the Greenacre clan is riveting as she butts claws with the Templeton's, the distinguished society family responsible for massacring all the members of her vast clan. She'll stop at nothing to exact revenge.

Shunning their lycanthropic side for generations, the Templeton's finally realize the power they've denied themselves. Getting their hands on Laura's pure blood and wielding it indiscriminately is the goal of the new patriarch intent on building up his clan's strength and power once again. It's a battle to the bloody, meaty death as the Templeton's hire a team of mercs to take out Laura.

Emson is deliciously inventive, brutal and precise. Maneater is like no other werewolf tale you've read recently. A lonely werewolf girl, Laura Greenacre is not. She's nothing like Millar's character, or any other shifter you've been exposed to. Instead she is a ravening beast, ruled purely by instinct, and dead set on revenge. Emson does not trifle with wasted energy at times; we don't get to really peer in depth into the minds of his characters to make an emotional connection with the exception of Laura and perhaps Thorn. And while there is a certain fragility to her, don't be fooled, Maneater is meant to be undiluted horror and that's exactly what it is.

I purposely had to stop tearing so fast through the book in order to really savor each scene. This is because Emson's paragraphs are honed with scalpel-like precision, like a surgeon slicing a neat red path featuring the diverse and believable pov's of his characters. And those differing perspectives, coupled with Emson's sparse language gives Maneater the overall feel of a rapidly paced film. The battle of Trafalgar Square, Emson's climax to the book and by far the best treat is absolutely gripping as Laura goes head to head against the Templeton's while tourists and police are caught within the bloody fray.

Maneater is a fresh infusion to the genre, ruthless, bold, and immensely entertaining. It ends on a deviously clever cliffhanger. A vial of Laura's blood gets into the hands of a Templeton and with it a worldwide hunt ensues as alliances are systematically made and crushed. Prey, Emson's coveted sequel is already queued up in my TBR pile and is expected to be just as engrossing and grisly.
A Fiendishly Bookish Review

Ok I know I am totally out of sync with all these glowing 4 and 5 star reviews but I really did not get the appeal of this book at all.

Spoilers from here on...

Where do I start? Well lets take Laura Greenacre our heroine. We're told on the dust jacket she's not nice, she's mean, she'll eat you alive, she'll wear her mucky shoes on your best shagpile etc etc. Why? because she was fathered by a man who first abandons her and then has all her immediate family killed by mercanries. On top of this when Laura enters the care system she discovers another girl has been raped by a care worker, later minding her own business in a club she is hit on by a stranger who throws his beer all over her, all this before a doctor and lawyer who are their to help her turn out to be sex pests. All these negative experiences of men mean that Laura naturally becomes a....you've guessed it, pole dancer! (when she is not being a werewolf).

Initially she lives up to her billing, she slaughters a couple of guard dogs, piddles in a police car and spends much of the first third throwing people around by their faces. Despite all this she manages not to be either thrown in jail or as is much more like detained under section 2 of the Mental Health Act. But then she kind of morphs into avenger mode and it turns out she only eats alive rapist's, murderer's and those really unhelpful doctors receptionists.

But don't worry another villian emerges in Michael Templeton. He must be bad because even though he is definitely not a hippy he has a pony tail! Which any watcher of 80's crime thrillers will tell means he is into drugs, treating women badly and given half a chance will be rude to your Mum! Despite being heir to a fortune and his Dad's mansion with a 50 meter swimming pool??! 50 meters!that's olympic size and twice as long as your average municiple facility! still it could happen. Where was I, ah yes despite all this Mike decides to be truly powerful he needs to be a werewolf too and gain super human powers, so he can be really rude to your Mum and there will be nothing you can do about it Mwahahaha! so he engineers it so he is bitten by Laura and turns.
Not just satisfied with this however he makes all his cousins into werewolves too. So now they are rich, powerful and influential and with super powers! so there is nothing to stop them now. Nothing to stop them establishing a powerful crime sydicate?, murdering their business rivals? ruling the world? No nothing to stop them going on a mad and random suicidal killing spree on the streets of London??! WHY?

Ooh I didn't mention Laura's love interest. He's a copper but a copper who has just split up from his wife because he was so devoted to his job and kept missing his daughter's birthday and even though now he's trying to be good events mean he still forget's to ring her at the right times...and his wife has now just met a Peter Perfect type who is doing his best to win his daughters affections... Please spare us this hackneyed story line! Fortunately for Laura the cop doesn't dress up as Mrs Doubtfire and go and work under cover with his wife, he falls for Laura and takes up his gun, throws away his career and kick's some werewolf ass!

I could go on and mention some of the characters rather odd habit of stopping in the middle of all the werewolf chaos to tell us about Hadrian's wall, or the particular model of Saab someone is driving but I won't.

Maybe I should give up on this genre but I do like the odd one! If your reading Joe Hill please write another book and remind us how good horror can be!

End of Spoilers.

I would actually rate this 4.5 stars only because having just read Skarlet by thomas Emson I can't quite bring myself to like this as much. Having said that after reading the back of this book i didn't expect to like Laura Greenacre at all as she wasn't meant to be a likeable character so I was quite surprised how after few chapters I found myself quite fond of her.

What I like most about Thomas Emson's books is the fast pace, there is simply no time to get bored or fed up. Once you start reading you have to keep on reading until the book is finished.
I would definatly recommend this book to everyone, it won't disappoint!