Helpful Score: 3
This is why I read. Gems like 'Sharp Teeth' make every sub-par book I've ever read seem worthwhile. When I first heard the book was somewhat like poetry I was a little nervous. I'm not a big poetry person but this is on a whole other level. I wish this book came with a bard or something to sing each page to me that's how well the story flows. The text carries you from one page to the next and you barely realize you're reading as the images each short sentence holds are enough to make it feel like you're watching the best werewolf movie ever. Every word vibrates a tone and the story is like the perfect chorus. It makes you laugh, it makes you(sometimes forces you to) imagine, and it makes you think. I love a book that makes me think and I love a book that makes me remember why I love to read every day.
Helpful Score: 2
I could not get into this book. The style of writing (freestyle prose) just turned me off and the half completed thoughts that passed as sentences left me feeling confused.
Helpful Score: 2
I really enjoyed this book - much more than I thought I would - an epic poem set in LA would not normally be my type of reading-for-fun, but the werewolf aspect really brought this to life. It was a lot of fun, vivid writing and stronger characters than I thought. It was really great!
Helpful Score: 1
This is an interesting, wildly imaginative, genre-defying book about werewolves in Los Angeles. The story is told in free-verse poetry but otherwise resembles a novel, with chapters and characters and plot and whatnot. The story is about a man named Anthony who gets a job as dogcatcher and gets swept up in a mafia-type circle of werewolves, accompanied by a cop. It's equal parts thriller, police-action, and love story with a side of carne asada tacos. The story has a number of shape-shifting characters that can sometimes get confusing, but this book is well worth the read. I really enjoyed reading this. It's a novel that just happens to also be a poem. Or it's a poem that just happens to be a novel. Good stuff.
Helpful Score: 1
Written in free verse, this novel is more of an epic poemand an awesome one at that. The free verse format just works, allowing a streamlined, nuts-and-bolts storyline with lighting-fast pacing, as well as plenty of powerful lines that enliven entire stanzas. The werewolves, more wild dog than half-man-half-wolf, do not come across as corny or over the top, but natural, believable, and add so much life and depth to the story. It's a story of revenge, redemption, and love, seen through a host of different perspectivesindividual threads that weave seamlessly and mysteriously into a satisfying, final whole. I often found myself closing my eyes and attempting to put the pieces together before reaching the revelations that would surely comewhich is a good thing. My only real complaint would be that since there are so many key characters, and perhaps on some level due to the poetry format, a few characters never really made it out of development.
I literally could not stop reading this book. It is a quick read because it is written in a form like poetry, but you forget that almost immediately. It's premise - that there are people in our society who can transform themselves into wolves and survive by fighting packs of rival wolves - is probably not terribly unusual in literature (I wouldn't know), but the psychological relationships between and within the humans makes this a fascinatingly deep work with a gratifying ending. I intend to read it again to better understand the web of relationships amongst the characters.
