Mark of the Werewolf

by Jeffrey Sackett

A neofascist group seeks to tap into the immortality of Janus Kaldy, a man/werewolf condemned to an eternity of killing, in order to breed a race of hatemongers impervious to death

Genres: Horror, Werewolves, Fiction, Fantasy

323 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rather mixed on this one; at times I thought it would be a solid 4, and then maybe a 2, so I will go with 3 stars. Published in 1990, MOTW rides the coattails of the paperbacks from hell era, but the sophisticated plot sets it apart to a degree. From the front cover and the title, it is obvious that this novel features werewolves; lets just say a well worn horror trope. Sackett definitely puts a unique twist on this sub-genre, however, and one that I did not expect. Sackett's werewolves are essentially impossible to kill; they do not eat or drink outside of their monthly 'turn', you cannot cut them, hurt them with bullets, and silver is a joke. Further, they remain the same age as when they were first turned.

Captain Bracher quickly emerges as our main protagonist (although one of several main characters). Situated in North Dakota, Bracher runs a large genetic research station there, but all is not what it seems. Bracher is truly a vile man, completely given over to the 'race war', e.g., the one that 'whitie' is losing to the 'mud people'. It takes a strong stomach to come to grips with Bracher, and his dialogue and views. Bracher, with the help of a rich asshole Hull, hopes to find things at his research center that will, say, kill black people without harming whites. He longs to purge the human race of 'inferiors' and has a ghastly vision of America fully cleansed; a bastion of pure christian whiteness. He loves Hitler and is avidly working to unite various right-wing groups to start a race war like we have never seen!

One day, while Bracher's shock troups of the White Homeland Party (know as Whips) are collecting specimens for 'study' when they encounter some gypsies and decide to take them as well. Unfortunately for the Whips, one of the gypsies is a werewolf, and when the moon comes out, he proceeds to wipe out the whips almost to a man! He and his 'keeper', and elderly gypsy are soon recaptured and taken for study at Bracher's center. Bracher dreams of having an invincible army of werewolves to lead the race war and he an a small team of researchers quickly work to discover the werewolf secret. Meanwhile, the werewolf, Janos, just wants to die. After 3000 years of being a werewolf, Janos just seeks release.

MOTW has a neat and novel premise, and while the research team work on Janos, his past and origins slowly emerge; Sackett's historical background make this part come alive nicely. So far, so good! I was not as pleased as slowly, Sackett turns MOTW almost into a morality play, which I will not go into due to spoilers. Still, a surprisingly engaging read that breaths some live into a rather tired genre. 3 stars.

[Fiscassia · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I first read this book as a preteen, I got to the last page and turned right back to the first page to reread it. The book expertly blends history with fiction to the extent that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. The story is deeply psychological, and offers a unique explanation for the existence of werewolves that I found incredibly compelling. After some years passed, I did my third reread and could see enough flaws in the writing that I downgraded my rating to a four: The writing is intensely sophisticated when it comes to exploring Janos's past and the origins of werewolves, but the part of the story that exists in modern times seems to use all the subtlety of sledgehammers to establish that the bad guys are bad.

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

An unusual type of werewolf novel, this book gives a cosmic rationale behind the existence of the beasts, and a 'cure' of sorts. I found the villains of the book vastly more horrific than the monsters. About the only thing I truly didn't like about the book was the epilog, even though it gave me some ideas for my own writing.

[Ryan Woods · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fantastic werewolf story with a timely message about tolerance. Sackett does a great job of imagining what the life of an immortal lycanthrope would be. I loved reading about Janos and Claudia's little adventures through history (their encounter with Dracula was my favourite). The choice of names for characters and settings reveals how much of a fan Sackett is of the classic Universal Monsters. I wish he would have gone into a bit more detail about the characters' appearances but that's mostly a personal nitpick. He does a great job of showing how disgustingly vile the white supremacist worldview is. I only wish Bracher could have suffered more at the end of the novel. I'm surprised this one hasn't gotten the film treatment yet.

[Sonia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an unusual and "page turner" read. My first time reading Jeffrey Sackett and truly liked his style of relating his story. Couldn't put it down. Now getting ready to reread it, it's that good. Of course, the ending could have been a little more tended to, like the rest of the book but still, a very good read.

[Вячеслав Че]

The sorrowful Demon, the spirit of exile,
Was flying over our sinful earth,
And the memories of better days
Crowded his mind.
Those days, when in the land of light
He lived as a pure cherub;
When a comet, flying by,
Loved to greet him
With a warm smile;
When, surrounded by eternal fog
And thirsty for knowledge, he marked the path of
Nomadic caravans
In the space among abandoned stars;
When he believed and loved,
Because he was the joyful First Creation!
Doubt and anger did not torment him.
Then, his mind was not threatened
By a horde of somber fruitless centuries.
There was so much, so much...
He had not the strength to remember it all!

[Nelio Gomes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite the epoch spanning plot for what I had thought would be a simple werewolf tale! This novel had a great concept, and some wonderfully gory werewolf antics, but the human characters failed to impress. Each seemed to be a “voice” for a particular point of view, but so much so that they did not come across like realistic people. And it was hard to buy into the effectiveness of the whole militaristic organization that was somehow run out of Hulltech with little more than a bunch of skinheads. Still, a rip-roaring, rattling-good story that kept me entertained!

[Elaine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this, especially for the combination of characters and their motivations

However, it seems I misplaced the book and have been looking for it for ages...

[Robert Jr. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t often lose track of time when reading but with this one I did that twice. I found this book at my local used bookstore in its very sparse horror section (always overstuffed with King and Koontz) a few months ago. I got around to reading it due to the spooky season and was not disappointed though there are some caveats.

The story and its twists are very interesting, and the mystery of the main werewolf’s actual identity and history, which he has since forgotten due to the wear of centuries on the human brain, is very compelling. The idea that werewolves are completely invulnerable, do not eat or drink, and are immortal is interesting. So is the explanation of the mark of the pentagram a werewolf sees on their victim which here dooms the marked to becoming werewolves for a very specific reason. I really liked that one as it’s a reference to the 1941 film The Wolf Man, and I like the classic Universal monsters. This is where it also starts to get a little deep into the religious angle for my comfort. However, it does keep the talk of Christian faith in the mouths of the characters just as it does with the vile hate speech of the fascist villains.

A major theme that seemed to come out of the text and underly the story and drive the plot was that faith in God is demonstrated by sacrificing your life in service of “good” even though you will fail anyway. This just seems wasteful and idiotic to me. This is made plain through the kidnapped minister, John Neville, and his wife, Louisa the cousin of the story’s neo-Nazi primary villain, Bracher. John Neville turns, too quickly, into a sniveling coward that partakes in the neo-Nazi’s experimental brutality in their werewolf research out of both personal curiosity and fear for his own life, reduced ultimately to a cowering plot device. His wife on the other hand remains a stalwart and verbal resistor against her cousin even though he threatens to kill her, regularly proclaiming her faith and Christianity. She is given the choice to possibly sacrifice herself to kick off the climax, the same choice given her husband at about the same point which she passes, and he fails. However, she has reasonable doubt that she may survive her “test” whereas her husband knows he will die if he does not fail a test of faith of which he is completely unaware. He reasonably struggles to survive an impossible situation. I think the author just decided to make him a participant in the medical atrocities in order to paint him just as dirty as the villains of the piece. I would have enjoyed a bit more characterization on Neville’s part, a little grayer, not just a black and white paintbrush which is the outlook on the world from this particular story. It is also here where the author seems to conflate the fallacy of nazis as atheistic and secular. However, werewolves versus Nazis and the classic Universal horror movies had strong religious elements as well, so I guess I can let these gripes go. The conflation of Atenism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity is also questionable (at least to me), but it does serve the story, so I guess I can let this one go as well.

Overall, I did like this book but for a few points as already mentioned. I always love pitting modern science against the supernatural but finding a solution that spits in its face and that confirms the religious sucks. I could have gone for a solution to the supernatural through science but that does not directly contradict the religious, but the book does not do that. Who knew the secret to defeating immortal, invulnerable werewolves was for them to find salvation in the lord? Blech. Would I recommend this one? Yeah, if you want a werewolf versus nazis cheesy horror story this works.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars - Love the take on this where the werewolf is the good guy and we have white supremacists as the villains. This is a real page turner and I applaud Jeffrey Sackett for his plot - I found myself relaying different scenes to my husband as I read. I only wish that the human characters and their dialogue had been more realistic, and that the ending had been as satisfying as the rest of the book.

[Mr. Dave Kessler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bipedal werewolves. This is a wild one.

A cynical, thousands of years old werewolf with memory problems is captured by neo-nazis in hopes of creating a master werewolf army/race.

Werewolf lovers' quarrel, the occult, Nazi experiments, ancient religions, the Magi, The Romani, historical flashbacks, werewolf brawls....

[Kory · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the historical events that were tied into the story. A fun read! I'm interested to read more from Sackett.

[Julianne Orosz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I randomly started to read this novel because I had nothing else to read in the bath. I did not care if it got wet, my sister found it in a discarded bin at the local high school library. I did not have high hopes for this story and was not expecting much except to kill time. I was mistaken. This story really took me by surprise and I still tell people about it to this day and how I judged a book by its cover and how I learned my lesson.

[Connie Doolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is by far my favorite fictional account of the Easter story. That one moment where their eyes meet....powerful stuff.

[Menion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now this is outstanding werewolvery! (is that a word?) Anyhow, I put this up in the top three of werewolf stories, along with 'The Wolf's Hour' and 'The Wolfen.' Yes, I am putting it just a bit ahead of 'The Howling.'
RDCV of the plot: the werewolf (shit, I forgot his name already-going senile) is traveling with gypsies in the modern day USA (anyone ever seen them here?) and gets captured by some bunch of Nazi wannabees who, of course, want to start a race war and trash the lesser races. Anyhow, story goes back and forth between the wolf and white wackjobs, interspaced with parts from his past that explain how he came to be.
Great part about this is the backstory through time-the author put some thought into this one, and really added to the whole werewolf idea. Plus, you get to meet Jesus, Dracula, and other characters-what more could you want? I like some of the changes he made-for example, this wolf can't be killed by silver. He actually comes off as a very sympathetic character, which is unusual-in most of the stories, it is wolf is bad and shreds humans to bits. This one can and does still shred humans, but he isn't happy about it. It IS a curse, after all!
Overall, a great story, it's worth tracking it down online from the secondhand dealers. Only part I found a bit trite was using Nazis for bad guys, too many people use them, it's become overdone. If you need a group of nuts to dislike, how about some sort of crazy eco-terrorist group? Or some kooky southerners who want to re-start the Civil War? Or Mexican militants who want to capture CA and TX for Mexico? That's just my own minor grumble, it's a great story and worth reading. I will have to track down another by Sackett-he's really good.