Bareback

Kit Whitfield

Average Rating 8/10 (1 Review)

Lola Galley is used to doing things she doesn't want. She certainly doesn't want to be assigned the case of Richard Ellaway, the man who, under a cold full moon, mutilated a good friend of hers. But being a bareback, what she wants and what she gets are seldom the same.

For those born feet-first, life is comfortable, and one night a month they lock themselves in a secure room to fur up in peace. Barebacks, trapped in their human skin and drafted at eighteen into the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity, don't have it so easy. A full moon means patrolling the silent night in search of transformed citizens breaking the curfew. The rest of the month, Dorla agents mop up the after-effects of the trespasses, the fights and the maulings.

Resignedly, she takes the case - but before Ellaway can be tried, her maimed friend is murdered. Lola wants justice. She'll settle for the truth. But in a divided world, asking for the truth may bring answers that you don't want to hear.

'An intelligent book and a moving one.'

'Whitfiled's debut is a stunning imaginative feat that immerses the reader in a dark, dangerous and entirely believable world.'

Review by Nigel (160307) Rating (8/10)

See who won signed copies of this book here.

Review by Nigel
Rating 8/10
Imagine a society where 99.6% of the population are werewolves. What is going to be your biggest problem? Once a month, when the full moon rises, the vast majority throw off society’s civilised rules and return to their basic animal instincts... without some form of control mayhem would reign.

Over the centuries the best answer has been the curfew. On full moon nights the population lock themselves away and fur up in safety, ready for the next day when life resumes as normal and the world moves forward. The only problem is the curfew needs to be policed. Any werewolves found out on curfew night need to be dealt with swiftly and severely, otherwise the system fails and the consequences would be calamitous.

The members of the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity, DORLA, perform this policing function, the only ones that can be out on a full moon night... the other 0.4%... the Barebacks.

If you are born a non-werewolf you have no other option than to work for DORLA, as numbers are so limited and the work tends to be very dangerous. Since all the members of DORLA are non-werewolves, all are automatically hated and despised by the majority. DORLA works outside the normal laws of the land, with fear being used as a weapon to keep the population in check. This does not mean they are completely unanswerable but does give latitude to some questionable methods.

Into this world we are thrust as we follow Lola, a DORLA lawyer, assigned to defend people caught out on a full moon night. Like most healthy DORLA members she also has to perform full-moon duties... dog catches.

Lola is assigned to defend a client who claims he couldn’t make a government shelter when his car broke down, turned and bit the hand off one of the catchers that brought him in. The trouble is the catcher has just been shot in the head and the client is a prime suspect.

The world we see through Lola’s eyes is pretty dark, being taken from her werewolf parents and raised in the DORLA crèches, conscripted into service, doing a very dangerous job were everyone has injuries of one form or another and then being reviled by everyone around her outside of work. Soul destroying as Lola’s client informs her.

On the next full moon Lola and her trainee partner are set upon by a pack of three werewolves. Her partner is severely mauled and only one of the werewolves is caught. When the werewolf escapes and its interrogator is murdered she suspects she is next on the list. And so the main story line, basically a good old fashioned murder mystery, intertwines with Lola’s past and present life.

The story is very well written and marks an excellent debut for the author. The world created is gritty and real with the tension on full moon nights palpable. The feeling of injustice for the non-werewolves lot in life is also pitched just right without being overly clichéd.

This novel will not be to everyone’s taste but definitely shouldn’t be dismissed out-of-hand by more mainstream readers as a horror/fantasy novel... yes, werewolves are present, but that is just setting the scene for Lola’s world. The real story is about a person and what she goes through doing a hard and unrewarding job she did not really choose... and yes, being attacked by very large dogs once a month.
Nigel (16th March 2007)