This was a very cool werewolf story!



A small backstory without giving away spoilers:

Old Hickory, Tennessee becomes the backdrop for this story as it is an old mill town. Things seem peaceful until the O'Shea family move into town along with Squire McManus and they take over the funeral home.

As they become involved in the town deaths start happening to the point of bodies being ripped apart. No one wants to believe one of the local boys that saw his friend being attacked by some type of beast.

No one seems to think anything about the mystery of how the beast seemed to appear after the family arrived. Soon though it becomes apparent that they are somehow involved and when the family feel threatened they will not go down without a fight as when their secret is revealed is when the crap hits the fan!

Thoughts:

Southern gothic horror along with a touch of the Irish is what author, Ronald Kelly stirs up in this book and the atmosphere of the story just grabs a hold of you from the first page taking you on a "snarling" ride all the way to the end of the book! Giving this one five "ripping" stars!

Highly Recommend!
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This was a very cool werewolf story!

A small backstory without giving away spoilers:

Old Hickory, Tennessee becomes the backdrop for this story as it is an old mill town. Things seem peaceful until the O'Shea family move into town along with Squire McManus and they take over the funeral home.

As they become involved in the town deaths start happening to the point of bodies being ripped apart. No one wants to believe one of the local boys that saw his friend being attacked by some type of beast.

No one seems to think anything about the mystery of how the beast seemed to appear after the family arrived. Soon though it becomes apparent that they are somehow involved and when the family feel threatened they will not go down without a fight as when their secret is revealed is when the crap hits the fan!

Thoughts:

Southern gothic horror along with a touch of the Irish is what author, Ronald Kelly stirs up in this book and the atmosphere of the story just grabs a hold of you from the first page taking you on a "snarling" ride all the way to the end of the book! Giving this one five "ripping" stars!

Highly Recommend! ( )

I really enjoyed Undertaker's Moon (aka Moon of the Werewolf). Ronald Kelly is a far better writer than his Zebra roots and relative obscurity would make you think. Like most horror authors of the '80's, Ronald Kelly was trying to ape some of the style of Stephen King, especially in the beginning when we are introduced to the town of Old Hickory and some of its denizens. Unlike most of the also-rans of the 80's horror boom, he manages to succeed pretty well. Maybe that is a backhand compliment, but it is still a compliment.

On the downside, Kelly does have a way of clumsily dumping exposition into the dialogue. Sort of like the 'as you know, Bob' conversations of old science fiction. Also, unlikely coincidence plays way too big a part in the story. A better author would have recognized that and explained it away. I can't go further into detail without spoiling parts of the story, so I'll leave it there.

I don't mean to come off too harsh. As mentioned, I really grooved on the book. When I was tired and just wanted to read one chapter, I'd wind up reading three. And that's as good a recommendation as a book can get. ( )

I sure do enjoy Ronald Kelly's books. I've read several this year and I found them all moderately to highly enjoyable depending.

Undertaker's Moon is easily the strongest of his works that I have finished thus far. The pacing was brisk, the overall plot was unique and adventurous, the gore was top-notch, and the visual detail and minutiae of the setting were highly engaging. Kelly's strength, in fact, lies in that final point. No different here than any of his other works-the man writes rural Tennessee as a loving observer who has clearly spent much of his life there.

I have the same quibble with this book that I do with all of his others, and it remains this one weakness that prevents me from ever giving a 5-star review (though UM was quite close). Kelly's dialogue is a hard sell. It comes off as weak, unauthentic, stilted, and deeply contrived. I can rarely make it through more than a handful of pages without wincing and saying to myself "Damn it, man, no one actually TALKS that way...let alone teenage boys!" The uninspired dialogue is actually a real shame, given how much authenticity and life Kelly breathes into his exposition. I feel like if he'd been able to write conversations in a way that resonated with readers, he would have risen well beyond being a 'solid Midlist author' from the 1990's. Because he has some serious chops outside of that. But that one weakness is a harmful one, at least to this reviewer.

But half-assed dialogue aside, there really is some seriously fun material here. Kelly somehow manages to write a book that could readily be described as "Nazi Irish Werewolf Terrorizes Tennessee Hamlet" and still doesn't come off as campy at all. The subject matter is handled earnestly and with a lot of heart amidst the buckets of grue and piles of schlock.

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Vicious tale about a family of werewolves who pose as undertakers to feast on the recently deceased for sustenance. Suffers from an underdeveloped backstory of the werewolf fighter, but first class all the way. ( )