Wolf Flow

Read Wolf Flow Storyline:

    YOUR HEALTH IS YOUR ONLY TREASURE …
    These words buoy Mike as he recuperates in Thermalene,
the shell of an abandoned turn-of-the-century spa. Pitched from a speeding
Cadillac when the deal went bad, he has come to this haven at the edge of his
life.
    The waters here are said to heal. But in this Oregon
desert all is dry and dead-and Mike will be too, unless the waters' powers are
for real.
    The desert souls and parched dreams within this book are
real and frightful, and demonstrate the exceptional literary prowess that has
made K. W. Jeter one of today's most important young writers.
    1993 Locus Poll Award (Best Horror/Dark Fantasy
Novel, place: 10).
    
***
    
    From Kirkus Reviews
    Gritty, spare but rather empty horror yarn from the
author of Dr. Adder, Farewell, Horizontal, Infernal
Devices, etc. Vicious drug-dealer Aitch and his reluctant sidekick Charlie
beat their erstwhile partner Mike, a doctor and drug addict, to a pulp, then
throw him from a car in the high desert of eastern Oregon following an attempted
double-cross. Brought, barely alive, to an abandoned spa resort by a concerned
trucker, Mike suffers wild dreams of bodies splitting asunder, and of an ancient
doctor waving a scalpel-who subsequently appears alive, bathing in a pool of the
spa's sulfurous water. Mike too bathes and drinks, and is healed in body, indeed
possessed of extraordinary strength. The old doctor, Nelder, tells him that the
water is an ancient evil, somehow alive-and it likes Mike. Enthralled by the
horrid dreams conferred by the water, Mike now attacks his girlfriend, Lindy,
whom he phones for help before drinking the water, and the trucker's son, Doot,
who has also helped him. He mutilates the hapless Lindy, breaks Nelder, revenges
himself bloodily on Aitch and Mike, then threatens Doot-who, somehow, acquires
the water's powers and rips Mike apart while himself remaining uncontaminated by
the evil. Jeter can write, and his tightly controlled individual scenes succeed,
often handsomely. But the overall picture-the slender plot, the repulsive yet
uninteresting atrocities, uncertain character motivations, and the improbable
desires of the sentient spa-doesn't add up. Gripping in patches, then, but the
patches conceal a number of leaks.
    
***
    
    "Wolf Mow by K. W. Jeter is characterized by a
somber elegance that is Jeter's own trademark. The pace never lets up. This book
grabs you and pulls you irresistibly into a disturbing and splendidly delineated
world. Jeter details his story with hallucinogenic clarity. Don't miss this
one!"
    -Robert Sheckley
    
    "Jeter's is one of the most impressive bodies of work in
my field today. Sometimes reminiscent of noir fiction but far darker,
oppressively intense and hallucinatorily vivid, deeply felt and unflinchingly
honest, these books are what I believe contemporary horror fiction should
be."
    -Ramsey Campbell
    
    "K. W. Jeter sees through the human to the grotesque
underneath, a singular kind of vision that grabs you on the first page,
fascinates and terrifies you all the way through, and haunts you long after the
last page is over."
    -Pat Cadigan
    
    "Jeter is a writer who resists categorization in genres
obsessed with categorization, and there is a steely consistency in the worldview
through which his fiction is filtered. It produces novels which are densely
textured, bleak but with a saving note of grace, and edged with razor-sharp
sarcasms generated by a refusal to accept genre tropes, to take shared
assumptions at face value."
    -Paul J. McAuley
    
    "The best of the 'new' horror writers today."
    -Joe R. Lansdale