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Wulf
The legendary Wulf is called to the defence of West Waltham when the entire village is threatened by evil.
595 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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50 people want to read
About the author
Steve Harris
11 books16 followersLibrarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Steve Harris is a retired English novelist who was known for his work in the horror genre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_H...
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Steve Harris is a retired English novelist who was known for his work in the horror genre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_H...
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
November 29, 2024
Big, sprawling novels with a coming of age vibe seem to have been Harris' cuppa. Here, Harris takes a small, bucolic English farming town, adds in some comic horror and Mad-Cow disease and shakes it for all it is worth. West Waltham exists as a dot on the map, with only one road connecting to the rest of England. Harris takes his time here establishing characters (and their are many), with a young man James 'Heater' Heatley being the main protagonist. James, 14 yo, lives with his drunken, abusive father and subdued mother; he also has a 16 yo sister, who early in the novel is raped by the father. Not exactly a loving household.
Heater's pals formed a bicycle club and race through some woods on the edge of town. The woods abut a strange feature of the area-- 'God's Teardrop'-- a place where nothing will grow, and even animals/birds give it a wide berth. Harris teases out the history of the Teardrop in dribs and drabs, and the many legends which surround it, including the 'Wulf', something of the Teardrop's guardian. This provides the cosmic aspect to the tale. Wulf was published just about the time that BGE, or Mad-Cow disease, impacted the UK (1991) and Harris runs with this as well. Apparently (and Harris really takes his time here!) at a harvest festival 5 or 6 years ago, a dairy farmer and his wife cooked up a special pie using a 3 foot by 4 foot by 6 foot baking oven designed just for this purpose. In there, they cooked an entire cow, including the brains. Oops, as the cow had BSE, and double oops, most of the town partook of the pie.
When the story takes place, lots of bad omens start happening, and Harris takes us on a wide tour of West Waltham to establish this. God's Teardrop seems to be calling the Dairy farmers who baked the special pie; something it has done in the past yielding Bad things. The yuppies who live next to the Teardrop are having issues; in fact, lots of the townies are getting a little buggy. Heater and his girlfriend have their own problems, however. After Heater's dad raped his sister, then locked her in a coal bin out back, Heater helped her escape to her grandparent's place; Heater's dad beat the shit out of him once again, and now Heater moved out to stay at a crazy biker's place named Beetle. Harris tries to walk a fine line here with the cosmic aspect and Mad-Cow. Are people just succumbing to the disease, or are their supernatural events occurring?
I really enjoyed this, but definitely not for everyone. The breadth and richness of the characters gave this an old-school King feel not unlike It, but Harris paces this slowly, albeit he punctuates it with all kinds of nasty little scenes; the pace and the nasties really build up steam as the novel unfolds. Good stuff! 4 BGE stars!
Heater's pals formed a bicycle club and race through some woods on the edge of town. The woods abut a strange feature of the area-- 'God's Teardrop'-- a place where nothing will grow, and even animals/birds give it a wide berth. Harris teases out the history of the Teardrop in dribs and drabs, and the many legends which surround it, including the 'Wulf', something of the Teardrop's guardian. This provides the cosmic aspect to the tale. Wulf was published just about the time that BGE, or Mad-Cow disease, impacted the UK (1991) and Harris runs with this as well. Apparently (and Harris really takes his time here!) at a harvest festival 5 or 6 years ago, a dairy farmer and his wife cooked up a special pie using a 3 foot by 4 foot by 6 foot baking oven designed just for this purpose. In there, they cooked an entire cow, including the brains. Oops, as the cow had BSE, and double oops, most of the town partook of the pie.
When the story takes place, lots of bad omens start happening, and Harris takes us on a wide tour of West Waltham to establish this. God's Teardrop seems to be calling the Dairy farmers who baked the special pie; something it has done in the past yielding Bad things. The yuppies who live next to the Teardrop are having issues; in fact, lots of the townies are getting a little buggy. Heater and his girlfriend have their own problems, however. After Heater's dad raped his sister, then locked her in a coal bin out back, Heater helped her escape to her grandparent's place; Heater's dad beat the shit out of him once again, and now Heater moved out to stay at a crazy biker's place named Beetle. Harris tries to walk a fine line here with the cosmic aspect and Mad-Cow. Are people just succumbing to the disease, or are their supernatural events occurring?
I really enjoyed this, but definitely not for everyone. The breadth and richness of the characters gave this an old-school King feel not unlike It, but Harris paces this slowly, albeit he punctuates it with all kinds of nasty little scenes; the pace and the nasties really build up steam as the novel unfolds. Good stuff! 4 BGE stars!
April 21, 2022
I really rate Steve Harris as an author and am really sorry he isn't writing any more (or being published at any rate). You never quite know where any of his books are going to go - unpredictable and chaotic - and that is what makes his stories and characters so great. Admittedly some of the characters are pretty repellent, but you could never accuse them of being boring.
April 24, 2014
Read this book years ago, but I still think about it now all these years later - so it must have been good!!
March 16, 2016
Very very good
December 31, 2020
Going into the back paddock isn't normally this bad.
Jame "Heater" Healey has only one dream. Buying a new bike. With an abusive father, no money, and a handful of friends with similar small-town struggles, the only thing that makes him feel good is riding. After the latest in a series of beatings, Heater starts to notice strange things happening in his little country town. He and his friend Ember attend the local harvest festival where things take a turn for the weird. From here on in it is all downhill. Can Heater survive the return of the Wulf?
A couple of years ago I decided to revisit the novel The Hoodoo Man, which I read when I was young. It was just as good as I remembered and felt the need to hunt down the rest of Steve Harris' books. This was no easy task as the late Steve Harris (born 29 September 1954 in Basingstoke, died 4th October 2016) was one of those talented authors who was just becoming established when his career suddenly ended in the late 90s. Between his publishing house being bought out and the rejection of one of his novels for being too horrifying, his books went out of print and are largely forgotten.
The Wulf was Harris' second novel and has a similar narrative style to many horror novels. We get introduced to the small rural village of West Waltham and its inhabitants. There are abusive parents, cheating partners, semi-famous philanderers, tree-changers, impoverished jerks, and small-town folk. And in true horror novel form, the supernatural elements that seek to destroy this little corner of the world are only really as bad as the easily corrupted inhabitants living normal lives up until now.
Which is why I'm only giving this novel 3 stars. It is fairly good, if too drawn out, horror novel that doesn't have quite the impact that I'd been expecting. Of course, reading a horror novel in 2020 is like accidentally hitting your thumb with a hammer and then putting your thumb down on an anvil to make sure the hammer really connects cleanly this time.* So horror fans will probably enjoy this earlier Harris novel.
*My wife called this a heavy-handed metaphor. We're both very punny.
Jame "Heater" Healey has only one dream. Buying a new bike. With an abusive father, no money, and a handful of friends with similar small-town struggles, the only thing that makes him feel good is riding. After the latest in a series of beatings, Heater starts to notice strange things happening in his little country town. He and his friend Ember attend the local harvest festival where things take a turn for the weird. From here on in it is all downhill. Can Heater survive the return of the Wulf?
A couple of years ago I decided to revisit the novel The Hoodoo Man, which I read when I was young. It was just as good as I remembered and felt the need to hunt down the rest of Steve Harris' books. This was no easy task as the late Steve Harris (born 29 September 1954 in Basingstoke, died 4th October 2016) was one of those talented authors who was just becoming established when his career suddenly ended in the late 90s. Between his publishing house being bought out and the rejection of one of his novels for being too horrifying, his books went out of print and are largely forgotten.
The Wulf was Harris' second novel and has a similar narrative style to many horror novels. We get introduced to the small rural village of West Waltham and its inhabitants. There are abusive parents, cheating partners, semi-famous philanderers, tree-changers, impoverished jerks, and small-town folk. And in true horror novel form, the supernatural elements that seek to destroy this little corner of the world are only really as bad as the easily corrupted inhabitants living normal lives up until now.
Which is why I'm only giving this novel 3 stars. It is fairly good, if too drawn out, horror novel that doesn't have quite the impact that I'd been expecting. Of course, reading a horror novel in 2020 is like accidentally hitting your thumb with a hammer and then putting your thumb down on an anvil to make sure the hammer really connects cleanly this time.* So horror fans will probably enjoy this earlier Harris novel.
*My wife called this a heavy-handed metaphor. We're both very punny.
December 2, 2024
During a recent conversation about the heyday of horror during the 80s and 90s the name of Steve Harris came up. Despite having read some (if not all) of his books, his name had completely slipped my mind so I relished the prospect of a re-read.
Wulf is a bit of an epic mainly due to its very large cast of characters. The horror here is a mixture of supernatural and human, with a hefty dose of BSE (or CJD) thrown in for good measure.
It's all high concept stuff and very well written. If I had any criticism it would be that the conclusion is very drawn out but again this is due to having to deal with all of the huge cast.
Really enjoyed it, the Wulf is a great creation with its canine ferocity and its time-warping abilities and the blade which can cut through realities pre-dates Philip Pullman's subtle knife by a good few years.
Wulf is a bit of an epic mainly due to its very large cast of characters. The horror here is a mixture of supernatural and human, with a hefty dose of BSE (or CJD) thrown in for good measure.
It's all high concept stuff and very well written. If I had any criticism it would be that the conclusion is very drawn out but again this is due to having to deal with all of the huge cast.
Really enjoyed it, the Wulf is a great creation with its canine ferocity and its time-warping abilities and the blade which can cut through realities pre-dates Philip Pullman's subtle knife by a good few years.
December 16, 2025
Auch beim zweiten Versuch ist meine Meinung von dem Roman nicht besser geworden, aber zumindest habe ich ihn diesmal beendet.
Unterm Strich ist mir der Autor zu vulgär, und baut zuviel sexuelle Gewalt ein.
Die Idee eines abgelegenen Dorfs dass sich im Zuge einer raschverlaufenden BSE Erkrankung, welche die Betroffen schnell in Wahnsinn und Raserrei verfallen lässt, selbst zerstört hätte potential gehabt, aber Harris ist kein James Herbert, er setzt zu stark auf ein nicht sehr überzeugend ausgebautes Fantasyelement eines Gut gegen Böse Kampfes und macht sich keine Mühe einem seine Charktere einigermaßen nahezu bringen.
Unterm Strich ist mir der Autor zu vulgär, und baut zuviel sexuelle Gewalt ein.
Die Idee eines abgelegenen Dorfs dass sich im Zuge einer raschverlaufenden BSE Erkrankung, welche die Betroffen schnell in Wahnsinn und Raserrei verfallen lässt, selbst zerstört hätte potential gehabt, aber Harris ist kein James Herbert, er setzt zu stark auf ein nicht sehr überzeugend ausgebautes Fantasyelement eines Gut gegen Böse Kampfes und macht sich keine Mühe einem seine Charktere einigermaßen nahezu bringen.
June 28, 2021
This was an betraying horror book and a good reflection of how we can act very wolf like.
January 11, 2024
Surprisingly very good! King-esque in the community world building, and also felt a bit like a coming of age novel with a few of the characters. Though the content was very different, the reading vibe was reminiscent of Boy's Life/Summer of Night, and I really enjoyed this. Excellent and underrated book - holds up with McCammon and Simmons in the coming of age genre. Highly recommend.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews