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Incurable: Stories from the World of Cure
206 pages, Paperback
Published October 13, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 7, 2025
Incurable: Stories from the World of Cure is a collection of stories that highlight various shapeshifters and monsters. Some are straightforward tales while others have interesting twists. I enjoyed reading about more than just werewolves. Overall, I rate the collection as 3.5/5.
Bloodlines – 3.5/5 – Not a bad start, but just ok. This is a story of betrayal. Finding out about your family’s truth and your bloodlines doesn’t always turn out the way you hope. Hal is a good man, a sheriff, trying to solve some murders. He also shapeshifts, which helps with clue finding. Sometimes, he just wants to stay in animal form.
The Bullet – 3/5 – I guess I am not a big fan of zombie stories. A mutated rabies virus hits and turns people into monstrous zombies. Luke promised to always love Rose, so when she got sick, he didn’t leave her. It doesn’t turn out well.
Coyote – 3/5 – Just ok. Some weird formatting with maybe poetry lines inserted in the text. Teenage shapeshifter caught in a mixed family. Will he fight for or against humans? As he sits in the hospital after a concussion, he meets Lori, a nursing assistant who might be more than he first assumes.
Grey Wolf – 4/5 – Don’t mess with librarians. At least not this one. She has been around for a long time. Until Rog arrived on the scene. He thought he was protecting her from some harassers. In the end, he was protecting himself. Nice story.
His Time of the Month – 4/5 - What do you get when a Valkyrie marries a wizard and also a werewolf? An uneasy truce of sharing, apparently. In this story, it is the werewolf’s time with Sigrun, but wizard Stashu shows up to warn them that Zorn the werewolf is being hunted (as are all shapeshifters). In Poland, the three team up with the local pack and fight the Templars. Surprisingly good story.
Kooshti Lollipop Sherbet Cu*t – 2/5 – Very good apple fruity god [what the title mostly means, according to the author]. This is just weird. An angsty Stephanie waits for her train and is given some candy apples by an old Romany woman, who sings her a song. After eating the apples Stephanie starts changing into…. Well, I will let you find out.
Skin in the Game – 3.5/5 - This story is ok. Werewolves and selkies. Most of the werewolves are jerks, but the roommate is nice. When Eve gets into a situation, her roommate Clara and Eve’s mom come to the rescue.
Stalk – 4/5 – Super short story of just four pages, and it leaves you with questions. Julius is traveling in Germany by train, going from Dresden to Bremen. Along the way, he reads in the newspaper about some killings in Bremen, thinking it is good to be getting away.
The Summer of Slight Acquaintances – 4/5 – Good story, set in India. As Akashi travels by bus to her brother’s wedding, she and her fellow riders encounter Mrgam, a killer with red eyes. She is dragged off but not killed. Mrgam, actually named Jihan, remembers his first love and we get the sad story of how he ended up as a killer. He decides to let Akashi go and has to protect her to get her back to the road. Bit of a trope of reclaiming self but nicely told in a unique setting.
The Way of the Kaftar – 5/5 – In my opinion, this is the best story of the bunch. The writing is good and the story, set during a war in the middle east, makes sense. Murphy has been keeping his men as safe as possible by using his werewolf senses when on night patrol. After running into some werehyenas, things get strange.
Wildcat – 4/5 – Interesting way to find your people. Especially when you didn’t even know you were a shapeshifter at all. This final tale was pretty good. It has some suspense, as we follow Peter through a city in the wee hours of the morning.
Bloodlines – 3.5/5 – Not a bad start, but just ok. This is a story of betrayal. Finding out about your family’s truth and your bloodlines doesn’t always turn out the way you hope. Hal is a good man, a sheriff, trying to solve some murders. He also shapeshifts, which helps with clue finding. Sometimes, he just wants to stay in animal form.
The Bullet – 3/5 – I guess I am not a big fan of zombie stories. A mutated rabies virus hits and turns people into monstrous zombies. Luke promised to always love Rose, so when she got sick, he didn’t leave her. It doesn’t turn out well.
Coyote – 3/5 – Just ok. Some weird formatting with maybe poetry lines inserted in the text. Teenage shapeshifter caught in a mixed family. Will he fight for or against humans? As he sits in the hospital after a concussion, he meets Lori, a nursing assistant who might be more than he first assumes.
Grey Wolf – 4/5 – Don’t mess with librarians. At least not this one. She has been around for a long time. Until Rog arrived on the scene. He thought he was protecting her from some harassers. In the end, he was protecting himself. Nice story.
His Time of the Month – 4/5 - What do you get when a Valkyrie marries a wizard and also a werewolf? An uneasy truce of sharing, apparently. In this story, it is the werewolf’s time with Sigrun, but wizard Stashu shows up to warn them that Zorn the werewolf is being hunted (as are all shapeshifters). In Poland, the three team up with the local pack and fight the Templars. Surprisingly good story.
Kooshti Lollipop Sherbet Cu*t – 2/5 – Very good apple fruity god [what the title mostly means, according to the author]. This is just weird. An angsty Stephanie waits for her train and is given some candy apples by an old Romany woman, who sings her a song. After eating the apples Stephanie starts changing into…. Well, I will let you find out.
Skin in the Game – 3.5/5 - This story is ok. Werewolves and selkies. Most of the werewolves are jerks, but the roommate is nice. When Eve gets into a situation, her roommate Clara and Eve’s mom come to the rescue.
Stalk – 4/5 – Super short story of just four pages, and it leaves you with questions. Julius is traveling in Germany by train, going from Dresden to Bremen. Along the way, he reads in the newspaper about some killings in Bremen, thinking it is good to be getting away.
The Summer of Slight Acquaintances – 4/5 – Good story, set in India. As Akashi travels by bus to her brother’s wedding, she and her fellow riders encounter Mrgam, a killer with red eyes. She is dragged off but not killed. Mrgam, actually named Jihan, remembers his first love and we get the sad story of how he ended up as a killer. He decides to let Akashi go and has to protect her to get her back to the road. Bit of a trope of reclaiming self but nicely told in a unique setting.
The Way of the Kaftar – 5/5 – In my opinion, this is the best story of the bunch. The writing is good and the story, set during a war in the middle east, makes sense. Murphy has been keeping his men as safe as possible by using his werewolf senses when on night patrol. After running into some werehyenas, things get strange.
Wildcat – 4/5 – Interesting way to find your people. Especially when you didn’t even know you were a shapeshifter at all. This final tale was pretty good. It has some suspense, as we follow Peter through a city in the wee hours of the morning.
November 2, 2025
I received an ARC of this book.
I'm unfamiliar with the world of Cure. I'm honestly a little uncertain if its generally a shared world under Running Wild's imprint, or this antho is a step outside of the norm in making it a shared world and its usually a single author's playground. Consequently, I'm treating this more as a themed collection rather than trying to think about it in the context of its greater fictional world.
Overall, a collection of what I would call urban fantasy stories, though many are set in different countries and more rural settings with less of (to no) emphasis on the romantic or erotic than you would usually find in that genre. Which was a nice change of pace. There is one weird entry, the second story, which seems to be a post-apocalyptic zombie virus story? Which felt very out of place among the other stories here...but again, maybe within the larger context of this world it makes sense?
There's a solid detective-esque story with a nice twists both on the lycanthrope mindset and some interesting cultural stuff that I'm curious if it persists through the larger world right off the bat in Jerry Purdon's 'Bloodlines'. Patrick Scott's 'Grey Wolf' gives us another (ex)-Leo or detective as the protagonist in what I would call a hunter's origin story in a fun setting. I really appreciated Deborah Sullivan Brennan's 'Skin in the Game', Chris Morris' 'Wildcat' and Scott Chaddon's 'In the Way of the Kaftar' (as well as the opening story) for really trying to stretch out into other kinds of lycanthropes and even traditions. In the Way of the Kaftar also had a lot action, for those here for that. Neepa Sarkar's 'The Summer of Slight' to some degree didn't feel like it fit with the overall collection, which was much more in your fact about the urban fantasy setting, but I did like it dipping its toe into Indian culture, as well as the ambiguity of whether there is even a lycanthrope involved or maybe its just mental illness or a culture bound disorder of some kind.
Overall, I'd be interested in seeing more of this world to see how this all fits together
I'm unfamiliar with the world of Cure. I'm honestly a little uncertain if its generally a shared world under Running Wild's imprint, or this antho is a step outside of the norm in making it a shared world and its usually a single author's playground. Consequently, I'm treating this more as a themed collection rather than trying to think about it in the context of its greater fictional world.
Overall, a collection of what I would call urban fantasy stories, though many are set in different countries and more rural settings with less of (to no) emphasis on the romantic or erotic than you would usually find in that genre. Which was a nice change of pace. There is one weird entry, the second story, which seems to be a post-apocalyptic zombie virus story? Which felt very out of place among the other stories here...but again, maybe within the larger context of this world it makes sense?
There's a solid detective-esque story with a nice twists both on the lycanthrope mindset and some interesting cultural stuff that I'm curious if it persists through the larger world right off the bat in Jerry Purdon's 'Bloodlines'. Patrick Scott's 'Grey Wolf' gives us another (ex)-Leo or detective as the protagonist in what I would call a hunter's origin story in a fun setting. I really appreciated Deborah Sullivan Brennan's 'Skin in the Game', Chris Morris' 'Wildcat' and Scott Chaddon's 'In the Way of the Kaftar' (as well as the opening story) for really trying to stretch out into other kinds of lycanthropes and even traditions. In the Way of the Kaftar also had a lot action, for those here for that. Neepa Sarkar's 'The Summer of Slight' to some degree didn't feel like it fit with the overall collection, which was much more in your fact about the urban fantasy setting, but I did like it dipping its toe into Indian culture, as well as the ambiguity of whether there is even a lycanthrope involved or maybe its just mental illness or a culture bound disorder of some kind.
Overall, I'd be interested in seeing more of this world to see how this all fits together
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews