Dreadful Skin

by Cherie Priest

I ducked into a niche between a cabin and the pilot house and hiked my skirt up enough to reach down into my garter holster. I've heard it said that God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal. We'd see what Mr. Colt could do for a woman.

* * * * *

Jack Gabert went to India to serve his Queen. He returned to London a violently changed man, infected with an unnatural sickness that altered his body and warped his mind.

Eileen Callaghan left an Irish convent with a revolver and a secret. She knows everything and nothing about Jack's curse, but she cannot rest until he's caught. His soul cannot be saved. It can only be returned to God.

In the years following the American Civil War, the nun and unnatural creature stalk one another across the United States. Their dangerous game of cat and mouse leads them along great rivers, across dusty plains, and into the no man's land of the unmarked western territories.

Here are three tales of the hunt. Reader, take this volume and follow these tormented souls. Learn what you can from their struggle against each other, against God, and against themselves.

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Werewolves, Fiction, Historical, Steampunk, Historical Fiction

186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

Cherie Priest is the author of about thirty books and novellas, most recently the modern gothics It Was Her House First, The Drowning House, and Cinderwich. She's also the author of the Booking Agents mysteries, horror projects The Toll and The Family Plot – and the hit YA graphic novel mash-ups I Am Princess X and its follow up, The Agony House. But she is perhaps best known for the steampunk pulp adventures of the Clockwork Century, beginning with Boneshaker. She has been nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, and the Locus award – which she won with Boneshaker.

Cherie has also written a number of urban fantasy titles, and composed pieces (large and small) for George R. R. Martin’s shared world universe, the Wild Cards. Her short stories and nonfiction articles have appeared in such fine publications as Weird Tales, Publishers Weekly, and numerous anthologies – and her books have been translated into nine languages in eleven countries.

Although she was born in Florida on the day Jimmy Hoffa disappeared, for the last twenty years Cherie has largely divided her time between Chattanooga, TN, and Seattle, WA – where she presently lives with her husband and a menagerie of exceedingly photogenic pets.

Reviews

[Danielle The Book Huntress · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so glad that I found out about this book. It was just what I was looking for. This book is an excellent journey into the heart of darkness in the American West, with a supernatural twist. And to top it off, the protagonist is a woman of unquenchable will and determination.

Irish nun, Sister Eileen, is small, but her spirit is tremendous. She has made it her mission to track and end a vicious werewolf disguised as a man, Jack. She's followed his trail of rampage and blood over several continents. Never giving up, never relenting. Until her mission has been accomplished.

This book is told in three parts, each with a different sort of narrative that effectively tells the story. I couldn't hardly stop reading this book. I was enthralled. The final showdown in the middle of the desert in a town on the Texas-Mexican border held me breathless. This is the kind of horror that sneaks up on you. You don't see scene after scene of rampage and gore. Instead, you come to feel for the narrators, with no guarantee of their survival. And when some don't make it, you feel the loss with the same enormity that Sister Eileen feels.

Ms. Priest could not have created a better protagonist. This tiny, fierce woman of God couldn't have endeared herself more to me. She's real. Her faith might be shaken, but never broken. This endless hunt has hardened her in the ways that makes her even more of a weapon against a creature of cruel, soulless evil.
This quote shows some of her mettle:

"I've heard it said that God made all men, but Samuel Colt made all men equal.

We'd see what Mr. Colt could do for a woman." Enough said.

Werewolf fiction has become one of my favorite genres. I continue to search for good stories that provide a new vista to this arena of supernatural fiction. Coupled with a tale in the Old West, I was overjoyed with this novel. This setting fits so well with this tale of the hunter and the hunted. Even more powerful a touch is the fact that the hunter is a seemingly frail and mild-mannered woman, a nun of all things. But the prey will realize that he should not have underestimated this woman hunting him so relentlessly. This powerful story is told via a distinctive narrative that consists of various narrators speaking in some parts, and written letters and diary entries in others; and it has a realism and gritty vitality that spoke to me.

Short, yet powerful beyond words, I cannot recommend this story enough to readers who are looking for a horror story in an atypical, and underutilized setting. Actually, it's difficult to classify it as a horror story. Truly it's a story about humanity, and the force of will that drives people to fight unwinnable battles. Because our natures as humans don't allow us to easily give in. We fight because we must. When it ended, I took a deep breath and savored the experience. Highly recommended.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

So a nun with Colt gun, a gambler and a werewolf sat down at a table on steamboat.

No, it's not the start of a joke; it actually happens in this book. More important, it's not stupid.

I've read my fair share of urban fantasy, and I'll admit, I'm getting very tried of the tormented good guys. You know what I'm talking, the poor vampire who is looking for his true love, and finds her embodied in the heroine of the series. I'm not saying I don't enjoy a story where the vampire or werewolf is good guy; I like the Kitty books after all. It is, however, refreshing to read a book that really goes back in the annals of werewolf history and remembers that such creatures were the bad guys.

For very good reason.

What Priest does in this story is present a struggle for what makes a person human (to say anymore would risk spoilers). She does this, in part, because of her wonderful character of the Eileen, the Werewolf Hunter, who just happens to be an Irish nun. And who might be hunting a werewolf who was Jack the Ripper.

See, don't you want to read it now? C'mon! Priest remembers that werewolves are suppose to be bloody! Gory! Violent! Evil dastards! It felt so good to read this.

[Mir · Rating 2 out of 5]

How not to write multiple first-person narrative:

Introduce 5 or 6 first person speakers, none of whom sound at all convincing as who they're supposed to be (a Southern slave woman, an English aristocrat, a river boat captain, a gambler, an Irish nun, etc) or distinctly different from one another.

Then have most of them dead by page 60.

Thanks for wasting my time!

I'm really glad I didn't start reading Priest here or I wouldn't have picked her up again.

[Nicky · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve been meaning to get round to Dreadful Skin for ages. I mean, the idea of a gun-toting nun chasing an actually scary werewolf across America has got to be fun, right? Particularly given that I enjoyed Those Who Went Remain There Still, which had a similar horror feel. This isn’t creepy, more grotesque, but not gratuitous either. It’s more Dracula in tone than slasher film, I mean. I didn’t realise it was actually three shorter stories collected together, telling the story via three episodes in the nun’s life.

There’s not really enough space — or likeable enough characters — to get emotionally hooked to this. Even with the first person narrators, they switched so frequently and sounded similar-ish, so I didn’t get hold of them. But I loved the Spring-Heeled Jack link, the setting, the way the werewolf acts and the way Priest uses the werewolf lore here. The middle story feels like a bit of an anti-climax; it does reveal a couple of things, but it doesn’t involve the main antagonist, and mostly just sets up the last story.

Interesting construction, etc, but I think I would’ve liked a more cohesive novel more.

Originally posted here.

[Mauoijenn · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh boy! This was bad. BAD! Not one of Priest's better works. It was so bad I bailed at 25 pages before the end.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this one. I love the weird western genre, especially with werewolves, as my first novel was a "weird werewolf western." And this book had some awesome ideas. A werewolf on a riverboat. Werewolves traveling around in a tent revival and adding more wolves to the pack as they traveled from town to town. A werewolf nun. Just some cool ideas, but for me it never quite took off.

The story jumped around more than I'd have liked for one thing. Also, part of the novel was written in letters (similar to Dracula), while the other part was more usual prose. Once again, a neat concept, but something about it didn't click for me.

Overall, if you love weird westerns and werewolves, this is still worth a read. But if you're not a diehard fan of both genres, you may not enjoy it.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's only been a couple days since I finished this novel, but I find myself struggling to articulate why I'm leaning towards three stars. Premise-wise, it's a tale of werewolves in the Old West and features a badass nun/hunter named Eileen Callaghan, so should have been right up my alley.

Dreadful Skin is told in three parts, more like a set of three inter-connected short stories than a full novel. Because, yes, I really can't call this a 'novel': there's very little arc or development here, more like episodic adventures.

I really liked some of the more poetic flourishes Priest tries in the first section: a claustrophobic tale of horror unfolding on a steamboat anchored during a storm, with a rotating set of narrators. The setup is great there, and Cherie Priest has such good turns of phrase and a flair for description -- but for being a rotating set of narrators, the voices all sound pretty much the same, which is the main knock against this section.

And then the subsequent two parts... they're well-written, and tense/exciting at times, with such an interesting premise (traveling itinerant preachers preying upon the flock! the juxtaposition between religious fervour/fits and werewolf transformation and demonic speaking in tongues!), but they just didn't click for me. Mostly because I was invested in Eileen, but none of the other characters -- there's no real cast here, and for the most part I was just uncomfortable with the 'systematic sexual assault' turn that the novel took. Not that I can never read stories with rape, ofc, but it has to be well-placed, whereas this felt like one of those where it was simply being used to harden up a female character and turn her bitter and angry and violent and vengeance-seeking, which is an overused trope I don't really need to see more of.

While finding out more about Eileen and her, ahem, true nature, was interesting, I think this one would've worked best if it was just the first part as a one-shot short story, and their voices made more distinct.

[Juushika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reread, 20201: I found this less memorable the second time around, but I can see why I liked it: the Southern Gothic werewolf is aesthetically unique and thematically interesting. It works best at a smaller scale and I'm a sucker for the tension and physical embodiment of a werewolf chase sequence, and so the middle third is my favorite--it has the most distinctive historical setting and as it goes on the focus tightens claustrophobically.

But the action ultimately overtakes the werewolves. The final third introduces big, weird elements to the werewolf lore, and there's no chance to explore them within an escalating violence and scale which feels routine, cinematic, and forgettable. (Although I did this time enjoy the effect of the abrupt closing paragraphs.) I love werewolves in part for how the trope talks to itself--which elements of the werewolf metaphor morph and which reoccur; how werewolves reappear in different bodies and innumerable settings. I appreciate what this adds to that plethora--but I've also read a plethora more werewolf books since I first read this, and it feels less interesting and distinct as a result.


Original review, 2008: An Irish nun pursues an English werewolf through the American south--but in order to kill a monster, she may have to become a monster herself. The story is told in three sections, each with a distinct narrative style--a choice which holds reader attention but fragments the book. Dreadful Skin is not a unique addition to the werewolf genre, but it does feature realistically brutal violence and an unique, haunting Southern gothic setting. The thematic elements of justification and prey could be better fleshed out, but they add welcome depth to the novel. On the whole, Dreadful Skin is not exceptional, but it is compelling and swiftly readable--a Southern flare on a werewolf novel--and I recommend it.

I have read three other novel by Priest (the Eden Moore trilogy), and found them competent but not memorable; this novel was the first of hers to truly capture me. Priest knows how to write a strong, detailed story--but often the plot is so tight and so complete that there's not much else, be it characters or themes, to take away from the book. Dreadful Skin is different: the premise and plot are fairly straight forward, and other aspects have the chance to come forward and shine. With numerous narrators and narrative styles, more time is given to story--life stories, back story, and storytelling itself. Running behind the nun's attempt to kill a monster are a number of themes--the nature and roles of hunter and prey, the justification of becoming a monster to kill a monster--which add welcome depth to the story. Both aspects could stand to be better fleshed out, but their presences alone make Dreadful Skin a more thoughtful and meaningful book.

The other aspects of the novel are more varied, but on the whole: they are good, but never great. The numerous narratives provide more story and hold reader interest, but they fragment the novel and the reader never has the opportunity to lose himself in the story. The brutal violence that Priest writes so well makes these werewolves frightening--yet they are barely described and seem based almost entirely on clichés. The Southern gothic setting is a hallmark of Priest's novels, and it is both haunting and realistic here, setting the book apart from most of the werewolf genre. The themes discussed above are a welcome inclusion, but they could stand to be better fleshed out--especially at the book's abrupt conclusion, where they dangle, promising but unfinished, when the story cuts off. Finally, perhaps more a matter of personal taste, I didn't enjoy Geyer's illustrations.

This is by far my favorite novel by Priest. The characters are unique, the setting is wonderful, and the plot is strong--but there is more than plot alone: storytelling, character motivation, and themes all serve to make this novel interesting and meaningful. The book has its slew of faults, and they hold it back: it is often good, but it never quite rises to become great. Nonetheless, Dreadful Skin captures and holds the reader with a lyrical narrative and the brutal realities of a werewolf attack. It is an interesting and swift read, and I enjoyed it. I recommend it.

[Zephfire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the first book of Cherie Priest's that I've read, and it won't be the last! A wonderfully gothic werewolf tale that starts in 1870 on board the steamboat Mary Byrd as it makes it's journey up the Tennessee river, bound for Chattanooga . It is divided into three tales, the first tale taking place on the boat and from varying points of view as some of the passengers tell you about themselves and their fate on that tormented night.
The second tale is set in 1879 and starts in Texas, and comes mostly from the point of view of the would be werewolf executioner, for whom all is not going well and rumours are circulating about a travelling religious troupe ... and it's possible connection to missing people wherever the troupe visit.
The last tale is set in the war torn wastelands in 1881 and takes you through the chase between the werewolf and the person that would be it's executioner (I'm being careful to not tell you who they are so that I won't spoil it for you!Forgive me if I seem vague on the characters..it is quite deliberate!) The religious troupe we were introduced to in the second tale, now minus it's Reverend and under the leadership of the Reverend's son...and the werewolf! The executioner is closing fast and a showdown is looming. I won't spoil the neat plot twists that accompany the ending, I hope you'll discover them for yourself by reading this book!
I was delighted by the whole feel of the writing in this book, i'm not sure if this is Cherie's usual style but it reminded me greatly of H.P.Lovecraft's ~ Necronomicon (always a bonus for me when done well as a fan of Lovecraft's work!) as it encompasses letters from one character to another, and personal account/ diary style entries, it was a real treat to read!

[Laurie · Rating 4 out of 5]

From my point of view, it’s hard to do a werewolf story well. They turn out silly, or are just gory. I mean, most are pretty predictable- moon gets full, person turns into wolf and kills people. Turns back to human, doesn’t remember anything.

This one is different. They lycanthropes aren’t all cut from the same cloth, and they don’t lose their wits completely when then transform. During their human times, they have plans and carry them out methodically. Some are good, some are tormented, some are evil.

The book is told in three connected episodes, each episode using several first person POVs, allowing us to gain full knowledge of the horror of the situation. It’s a grim book, with an unusual setting for a werewolf novel- rather than the foggy streets of London, these creatures roam the American south. This story will keep you in suspense until it’s unexpected ending.

[Brian Engelhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

The wild west, werewolves and a rogue Catholic nun. Enough said.

[Rachel-RN · Rating 2 out of 5]

A gun carrying werewolf hunter who happens to be a nun (and has her own secret!)?! Sign me up!
In reality this was disappointing. I think the format didn't work. This is told in 3 parts. The 1st part is told in 1st person, but with several viewpoints. Each chapter is a different viewpoint- but no chapter headings nor was it obvious (sometimes) whose point of view it was. The 2nd part was 3rd person and this worked so much better! The 3rd and last part was back to 1st person. But the chapters had headings so I knew whose point of view it was.
The frequent POV changes were just too distracting.

[audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Such a complicated book. Let's unpack this.

So: Priest loves to experiment with multiple POVs. In this case, six. This does and doesn't work. It doesn't work for the first story because we have five POVs thrown at us from the get-go, and then they're winnowed away as they're killed, but oy five POVs. It does work in that I see what she was going for with setting up five POVs who are then killed off one by one to narrow and focus the narrative.

Killing off five POVs doesn't narrow and focus the narrative because we have exactly one chapter to meet these folks, then we're dropped straight into ZOMG WEREWOLF, all throat-ripping and lightning-flashing and--

Authors? Hello authors, pull in close, my kittens. *Kiss kiss*. Here is a thing: I love plot that is referenced by or dependent on weather. I love it like meow. So much love.

But if you forget to mention at the start of a chapter that it is raining cats and dogs, then later depend on that info once the werewolf arrives? It feels like deus ex meteorologica. I do not like this. I do not want to hunt back through that chapter to see if at any prior point heavy pelting rain was mentioned. It makes me cranky.

Other things that make me cranky: having three chapters of Tell (No Show) and then A Sudden Werewolf. I have had no time to fall for your characters. I have had no time to get to know them. I would like to know them better before they are eaten. And Priest does amazing characterization with very small strokes, which is an art, and if she's reading this please teach a class for other authors, seriously you do it amazing -- and yet still I was like la, body count.

That was the first story. The other two stories were a magnitude better, and if you think I am not here for a victimized heroine castrating her rapist with a hand-scythe and tossing his junk around a church nave, we should probably go for drinks so I can explain myself, because I am SO here for that. On every day ending in y.

Great heroine. Great supporting characters. Lovely Western Texas and surrounding environs. Sentences that give life for daaaaaaays. Weird inexplicable lack of passing the Bechtel Test getting a serious side-eye.

So: you get premature werewolves, deeply felt placeporn and short-lived supporting characters, along with a climax that was every last thing that Joe Lansdale's Dead in the West wanted to be but wasn't. A good time was had by all (except for that dude in the church, and no one was sorry).

[EA Solinas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclaimer: This is is one of those werewolf stories for people who actually like werewolves, not pretty shirtless boys who happen to turn into wolves.

That said, Cherie Priest's "Dreadful Skin" is a three-part novel that slowly unfolds a truly horrifying, sometimes shocking story. She packs the entire story with historical details, well-rounded characters, buckets of gore and truly monstrous monsters -- and it has a gunslinging Irish nun hunting werewolves. What could be better?

In the years after the Civil War, several people are on a steamboat called the Mary Byrd -- a gambler, a freed slave-turned-waitress, a hardworking captain, a deranged Englishman named Jack Gabert, and an Irish nun named Eileen Callaghan. During a thunderstorm, a monstrous creature begins killing the passengers and crew, and only one person might be able to kill it.

A few years later, Eileen investigates a wandering minister in the Texas town of Holiness. Some say he is possessed by the Holy Spirit, but she suspects that he's secretly a werewolf. And a few years after that, she is called back by a young man she met in Holiness, revealing that the religious movement has been corrupted by an evil man who turns into a beast -- a man named Jack.

Gun-toting nuns, insane werewolves, Weird West settings and buckets of blood. Just the description of "Dreadful Skin" confirms that this is an awesome horror story -- and the fact that it's written by Cherie Priest makes it even better. Her werewolves aren't sexy people-like-everyone-else, but a monstrous curse that only death can cure.

And her writing is absolutely gorgeous, full of bleak poetry ("The river washed us all clean. It washed us down to nothing but bones, and all our bones were the same"), religious undertones, and graphic violence. She also has the knack for writing from the perspectives of many different characters, giving each of them a voice and history before the plot really gets moving. It makes them feel more real.

The most "real" of all is Sister Eileen, a butt-kicking, pure-hearted nun who wanders the world in search of werewolves to exterminate, because she believes it is God's will. But all of Priest's characters feel like real people, except maybe Jack -- the strong ex-slave, the gambler with a heart of gold, the wide-eyed Leonard, and the abused but not broken Melissa.

"Dreadful Skin" is a delicious slice of Weird West horror -- guns, nuns, religion, fire, werewolves and plenty of gore. A must-read!

[Andrea · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dreadful Skin is the literary version of potato chips: edible, went fast, but left me unsatisfied and wishing for something either more substantial or tastier.

A number of factors contributed to my dissatisfaction, and the sum of the whole was greater than the individual problems.

First, there was the disjointedness. The book hops from head to head as if it can't stand to hang out in any particular one for more than a few pages. In the first part, where the narrator isn't immediately identified, it felt like half the time I didn't even know whose head I was inhabiting. This sense of disorientation was relieved in the last part of the book, where the narrator was identified in the chapter heading, but even so, the skipping around between viewpoints left me dizzy.

Another major issue for me was that I didn't connect emotionally to any of the characters. I just didn't care what happened to them. None of them was developed in much depth; some of this was probably due to the head-hopping.

My lack of empathy for the characters was enhanced by the feeling of the outcome being predestined that pervaded the novel. We already know at the beginning that most of the characters on the riverboat will die. So the first half of the story, gruesome and energetic as it is, feels pointless. But even after those characters have dutifully sank to their watery grave, the writing still projects an air of predestination, as if what will happen will happen, and how we get to the end doesn't really matter.

So, it was ok. I'm glad I read it, because I enjoy most of Cherie Priest's writing enough that I wouldn't have wanted to miss one of her novels. But if a reader is looking for a "monster on a steamboat" story and isn't so attached to Priest, she might do better with George R.R. Martin's Fevre Dream (at least, if she doesn't mind some truly nauseating violence along with the character development and suspense).

[Netanella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cherie Priest has just catapulted to the top of my must-read authors list with this book of three short stories about Irish nun Eileen Callaghan's hunt for a werewolf in Dreadful Skin. The stories are set in the last half of the 19th century, in a variety of locations: a steamboat on the Tennessee River; a religious revivalist camp in Holiness, Texas; the burnt-out town of Mescalero in the arid western desert. The shifting first-person narratives of the characters on the steamboat the Mary Byrd give the story a disjointed feel that lends to the horror of the story that develops. The final sequence, the showdown in Mescalero between the werewolf pack which Jack has created and the strange mix of the Irish nun, the Texas Ranger, the lover and the fallen woman, is such a bloodbath that my eyes were riveted to the page in fascinated horror. Awesome job. I can't wait for more by Cherie Priest.

[Riju Ganguly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book contains three separate yet inter-linked novellas. All of them feature Sister Eileen as the protagonist, but with shades that make her distinct from puritans and crusaders, despite her waging a lone war against something deeply inhuman and monstrous. These three works are~
1. The Wreck of the Mary Byrd: The best part of this book, with riveting characters, gradual build-up of suspense, and brutal violence.
2. Halfway to Holiness: A meandering work that spends too much in introspection.
3. Our Lady of the Wasteland and the Hallelujah Chorus: A bloody conclusion to the saga that had built up, like a storm braking with maximum fury.
Overall, this is a grim and violent book that crackles with writing like electricity and frames itself with interesting characters. Only if it had a little more in terms of plot...!
Nevertheless, this is a very good that would be immensely enjoyable to those who enjoy pulp with modern sensibilities.
Recommended.

[Jammies · Rating 2 out of 5]

What can I say about a book which made me want to throw it across the room for the first third? Ms. Priest indulges in one of my least-favorite literary tricks, the "...and then I died" first person narrative, not from the point of view of one person, but from the point of view of three characters! If there is zero explanation for how a dead person is telling his story, then I don't want to read it.

The second part was a bit better, and I did like Ms. Priest's take on werewolves as monsters rather than as adorable, puppyish boy/men, but the final third of the story had the same problem as the first third, and the ending left the door a little too obviously open for a sequel.

Overall, I will chalk this up as a not-bad effort by an author who has clearly gotten much better since she wrote this.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little known book that I think deserves more shelf time, I wish I had the power to stock it in the horror section where I work. It's a refreshing addition to the werewolf genre and should be a staple of reading lists on like subjects. Violent and gothic without romantasizing, I still found the text to be beautiful. The characters are unique, the settings southern and lush.

Why it did not get raised to five stars, was the format of three sections. I saw the author's intent in splitting to illustrate a sense of passing time and journey, however I think it can be done without such hard lines. We got maybe one or two chapters inside Jack (the antagonist's head) and I was disapointed when this did not continue.

[Coki · Rating 4 out of 5]

very traditional horror story - makes me think of Byron and Shelley. Described as a Southern Gothic but I thought it felt more Western in the sparseness of language and stoic heroes. Almost feels like a serial with the multiple POV and the asides that bring the reader up to speed between parts. Quick read but well done and satisfying.

[Abigail Hilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Literary werewolf story with religion, steamboats, and gun-toting nuns.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the different writing style used to tell this story. Also, great characters and setting. Really innovative and refreshing.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Mary Byrd is a steamboat known to have disappeared under mysterious circumstances in the late 19th Century. For her latest round of passengers, this will be their final voyage along the Tennessee—all but two will find the muddy waters of the river their new home. The only question is: which two? And which of four vivid voices will perish in their desperation to subdue the Mary Byrd’s opportunistic attacker? Their outcome will be determined by the rise of the moon, the depth of the waters, and the skills of an Irish nun with a revolver nestled within the easy reach of her garter holster.

Dreadful Skin is one of Cherie Priest’s earlier novels, but retains the gritty richness and daring prose that survived to make her Clockwork Century books incredibly successful. The varied cast of distinctly bold personalities helps to tell the story through alternating points of view for the first part of the book, but they do so in the first person. The results are intimate and wretched confessions from each character as they indulge us with insight into their past, but awkward transitions between chapters ruin the balance between story and momentum (although this remains my favorite section). Sometimes it was not easy to identify who was speaking until a page or two into a new chapter. That was more frustrating than I realized and not at all what I have come to expect from the author of Boneshaker and Clementine (two books with characters so indistinguishable from one another as to never cause confusion).

POV aside, the story itself is an interesting mixture of urban legend and paranormal horror thriller. The cover, which is wickedly alluring in a nightmarish sort of way, makes it clear this is a tale about werewolves. I don’t usually indulge in vampire or werewolf stories; the sheer quantity of that type of supernatural tale in existence today denotes it’s popularity and also how rare it must be to find a truly original, non-derivative version of either. My hesitation doesn’t come from a well-read and tired background of werewolf tales, but rather from a long-standing and marked disinterest in the beasts themselves, an apathy for howling fur on two legs with inexplicable transformative abilities. If I’m going to read about werewolves or vampires, I don’t want to just read what I can easily theorize in my head from popular media. Choosing to read Dreadful Skin was equal parts wanting to read everything I could by Cherie Priest and discovering that this is not a book that’s “just about werewolves.” This is a tale of Spring-Heeled Jack.

For those of you who don’t know, Spring-Heeled Jack is a Victorian-era English urban legend. With differing opinions and (supposedly) second-and third-hand references changing his appearance and modus operandi, the main thing to understand is: Jack can jump really, really high. And he’s always up to no good. Ravaging women, wreaking havoc—that sort of thing. No one knows who or what he was, or even if he really existed. That’s the beauty of an urban legend, after all. And the beauty behind Dreadful Skin is Cherie Priest’s marriage of these two disparate elements: werewolves and Spring-Heeled Jack. Don’t ask me how she does it, but it is there and is one of the only things that saved this novel for me.

The characters were bold and intense, fully formed into demanding voices that drew my attention with the confidant vernacular of their Southern tongue until I was queerly charmed with their disgraces. Aside from drawing sympathy over their impending death, their backstories have little affect on the main plot: Eileen chasing down the elusive Spring-Heeled Jack. But you want to keep reading because, even if you don’t like these characters, you’re drawn to them in the way only flawed characters can do. And I believe Cherie Priest does flawed well. In this case, the strength of her characters is weakened by disjointed sections and an unsettling time gap.

Not that I don’t believe Eileen hasn’t been trying to chase Jack down during the years between sections, but as with Jack’s initial introduction (or rather, lack of one; surprisingly, he was the only character who I learned more of from the jacket copy than from the inside of the book), there’s something lacking in Eileen’s transition from the Tennessee River to the Texas desert. The intervening years are lost, as if to imply how she got from Point A to Point B is irrelevant. Although in the long run we understand she survived; she never stopped hunting. The final section improves, however switches tack completely. Part three alternates with epistolary conversation between Eileen and Leonard Dwyer (a minor character from part two), diary entries, and confessions into an interesting mixture never entirely predictable and always fascinating.

This is particularly engaging because we finally get to see Eileen’s slow transformation. Her Nun persona sloughs off, as if through the rough years on the hunt it has stopped being effective. While Eileen is clearly the protagonist and Jack clearly the enemy, there is an urgency to Priest’s prose that delivers a story beyond horror and werewolves. It’s a blend of Fairy Tale (with recognizable and sometimes blunt references to Damsels in Distress and Knights in Shining Armor) and Monster Tale unafraid to broach subjects like God and religion or fear. There are undercurrents of predator vs. prey, good vs, evil, and the internal struggles of the day-to-day of humanity. If only navigating our daily lives were as easy as avoiding the werewolves.

Of course, manipulative, greedy, and harmful individuals are sometimes hard to distinguish, but Priest acknowledges this with a bloodthirsty relish. Descriptions of carnage might offend those of certain dispositions (i.e. if you’re a major wimp, like I am). I bravely soldiered on and managed to get through the entire book without feeling scared so much as a little sick to my stomach and slightly disturbed. There are no great insights into the Spring-Heeled Jack legend, but it was an interesting pairing. And she did make the jumping rather sinister. Dreadful Skin is a Cat and Mouse Tale of revenge perfect the for Halloween season, or for any time you want an unnerving pick-me-up.

[James Reyome · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have yet to read a Cherie Priest book that is any less than amazing. This one continues the trend.

This is probably the best werewolf story I've read since David Holland's "Murcheston: The Wolf's Tale", and it's at least as much pure fun as McCammon's "The Wolf's Hour". It most certainly isn't Twilight (thank all that is holy.) It left ultimately me feeling more than a little sad...you KNOW how it's all going to come out, and and you know it won't be pretty. But it will be necessary. The characters are all memorable, especially Eileen (of course) and McKenzie, and I can't help but wonder if they might reappear in another book...maybe?

Also: pack supplemental oxygen when you start to read this. It left me breathless.

Priest does this stuff as well as anyone it's ever been my pleasure to read, and that includes the inestimable Joe R. Lansdale. Savor this Lady's efforts.

[Shazza Maddog · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title caught my eye, along with the author's name. I know I've read Priest's works before but can't recall when, so it must've been a while.

Anyway. A story in three parts, told from various POVs; centering (mostly) around two people, a heretical nun, Sister Eileen, and the monster she pursues, known in the British Isles as 'Springheel Jack'.

Gory, violent, and so lovingly illustrated, both by the word pictures Priest creates and the delightfully creepy, similar to previous century's art.

The ending is somewhat...ambiguous but still satisfying.

[Crim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Cherie Priest is good at writing characters and atmosphere though, but the books runs a bit too sparse, especially in the last chapters.

[Mathias · Rating 1 out of 5]

snoozefest from a usually good author. i dunno why this one even got printed

[Sheila Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on werewolf stories.

[JoJently · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have Dreadful Skin as a part of the Cherie Priest Bundle ebook, and I went into it thinking it was a novella. I was surprised to find it's actually novel-length, and then more surprised to find the book is actually a collection of three shorter, related works. The main character, Eileen Callaghan, is what connects the three stories. Eileen is trying to track down a werewolf.

The first story, "The Wreck of the Mary Byrd", is hard to follow because Priest writes the story in the first person, but features multiple characters this way. When she introduces them, it's easy to get a handle on them being different, because the first sentence establishes that this is a new character. Later, though, they begin to run together as she doesn't make it clear at the beginning of each section which character she's shifting to. The characters' voices aren't distinctive enough to tell them apart, and once the reader gets caught up in the story, it's too easy to think you're still reading from the first narrator's perspective when you shift to another speaker. I couldn't help but think the story would have been better had it been written from just one character's perspective, not just for ease of reading, but for strength of story. It felt like one central character would have strengthened the work, as short as it is.

"Halfway to Holiness", the second story, picks up nine years later at a Pentecostal revival, and has a bit more emotion to it, I think because Priest chooses to stick with one character, Eileen herself. It still moves too quickly, through the plot and resolution, and it felt more like it was bridging the gap between the first and third stories. In this story, we learn that Eileen herself is a werewolf, only more in control of her urges than the one she is hunting.

In "Our Lady of the Wasteland and the Hallelujah Chorus", the third story, we learn that not only is Eileen a werewolf, but also that the one she's hunting is the one who turned her. I missed both of these points in the first story, but I'll admit that I might not have been reading as closely as I should have. The whole multiple-first-person-narratives thing might have distracted me from these points.

The last story is the strongest of the three, because it has the length to develop the characters, and Priest shows off her talent for action and adventure that we saw in the Boneshaker novels. It still ends rather abruptly, with the major events resolved, but without the winding down I expect from stories like these. There's no highlighting the aftermath of the events (all of which would have huge effects on the town in which they take place), and I felt like the story was missing an extra chapter there at the end.

I like Priest as a writer, and I've recommended the Boneshaker series to a few readers, but I can't see myself recommending this book. It's too disjointed and uneven. Since I know Priest can do better than this, it's easy to overlook it, but had I read these stories first, I doubt I would have moved on to her other works. As it is, they're much better reading than this novel.