There have been numerous authors trying their hand in the same genre with Patrick O'Brian, but no one has truly been able to match the quality of his naval historical fiction. J.D. Davies' Gentleman Captain, is a fine entry to the genre, however, and manages to make itself different enough from those who have gone before. One of the main differences is the era. The novel is set in the latter half of the 17th century and offers a nice view of the post Civil War England.
I've previously reviewed Paul Féval, fils' and M. Lassez' The Years Between series that saw d'Artagnan meet up with Cyrano de Bergerac and go on adventures with each other. A few years later, Paul Féval decided to revisit the characters and wrote a trilogy that is known as D'Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled. The story is set after Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years After and spans the years between 1649 and 1655.
The Wolf Among Us is a bit of a surprise find for me, as I was first interested in a PC game of the same title and considered purchasing it before I saw that there was also a graphic novel available of the same story. I did not try to find out much more about the comic before I laid my hands on it. Imagine my surprise when I realised that the werewolf in the lead is actually the Big Bad Wolf - called Bigby Wolf here - who attempted to eat the Little Red Riding Hood and that he's secretly in love with Snow White with whom he is solving a murder mystery...
Last year, I looked back at my top five reads in 2014 and as it was a pretty fun experience to relive some of the highlights of that year, I see no reason not to try the same thing again. It was not easy this time either, since there were quite a few books that I had given the same ratings, but one must be ruthless sometimes and make decisions.
Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon is one of his most impressive tales of Conan the Cimmerian in his later life as the king of Aquilonia. It has been reinterpreted in comic form before, but the latest adaptation by Timothy Truman, Tomas Giorello and Jose Villarruba published by Dark Horse is undoubtedly the definitive edition of the tale in comic form - and it even improves upon some aspects of the original.
Whitley Strieber's The Wolfen (1978) is often mentioned as one of the best werewolf novels, taking the basic concept into a new direction. I wasn't that excited about the novel or the movie that was based on it and thus it took me a long time to pick up Strieber's other werewolf novel: The Wild (1991). But I'm happy to say that my fears proved unfounded and I enjoyed this novel more than I ever expected.
Jack Williamson is one of the legends of science fiction writing and he is known for coining many terms in his fiction that are in general use these days, such as android, terraforming and genetic engineering. His enthusiasm with science fiction is also apparent in his so-called werewolf novel, Darker Than You Think (1940), in which the the plot and existence of shapeshifters is heavily based on genetics.
The Girl King, a film by Mika Kaurismäki, tells the story of the Queen Christina of Sweden - or, rather, the story of her years in Sweden. It was filmed mainly in and around the city and castle of Turku in Finland, while the actors are from Finland and Sweden. I wrote about the film and its props earlier, so I will now focus more on the film and the way it depicts the queen and the era. And when you are done reading with my review, please take a look at my wife's opinion as well, over at the Wrestles with Words blog.
Aino Kallas' The Wolf's Bride is an early werewolf novella, written in 1928 (during the author's London years). Luckily, while the title is one that you could imagine seeing on the cover of one of those horrible werewolf romance novels these days, The Wolf's Bride draws heavily from the old Estonian werewolf myths and - for a large part - delivers those myths to the readers in the form of a story.
The further back you go in the werewolf genre literature, the less and less similar they are to the modern Hollywood-influenced genre stereotype. Alexandre Dumas was a prolific author who wrote The Wolf-Leader some time after he got into financial troubles and ended his cooperation with one of his most important collaborators, Auguste Maquet - with whom he had written the famous d'Artagnan Romances. I'm not enough of a Dumas scholar to say whether my disappointment with The Wolf-Leader might be the result of Dumas having worked alone this time, but I cannot but wonder if there's a connection.