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mad_about_books's review
5.0
With each book by Cherie Priest I read, I become more her fan. Ms. Priest has a unique take on the tropes with which we have all become familiar. Her books do not disappoint.
jazzsequence's review
2.0
Dreadful Skin wasn't as good as it could have been. As a collection of short stories, it's unsurprising that the narrative jumps all over the place, but take that one step further by adding multiple styles of narrative within each short story and it loses any sense of cohesion. The characters you want to learn more about get less screentime and are upstaged by other characters you don't really care as much about.
misterg65's review
3.0
A lot different from the Clockwork Century novels this book is really a set of three short stories, with a growing link.
It can be a bit gruesome at times, but what do you expect when you're dealing with ... no; I won't spoil it.
However the formatting of the Kindle version is terrible at the end, with initial letters going missing. "indow" and "urpley" spring to mind, along with another semi-word that I have no idea what it should be.
This loses a star...
It can be a bit gruesome at times, but what do you expect when you're dealing with ... no; I won't spoil it.
However the formatting of the Kindle version is terrible at the end, with initial letters going missing. "indow" and "urpley" spring to mind, along with another semi-word that I have no idea what it should be.
This loses a star...
morepagesplease's review
3.0
Interesting read. I think Priest is a great writer, and although this wasn't her best book by any means, I thought it was a good yarn.
grammarchick's review
4.0
I love books that take a real-life mysterious event and give it a much cooler explanation. Cherie Priest pulls that off quite neatly with Dreadful Skin, a novel in three parts starring an Irish nun and a werewolf. I know, I know, who hasn't seen that pair used in a really good book?
The story opens on the Mary Byrd, a small ship that actually did disappear somewhere on the Tennessee River between Knoxville and Chattanooga in 1870. On board the story's version is a tipsy captain, a former slave, a professional gambler, a secretive nun named Eileen and the cursed man she has tracked across two continents, John. Who is also known as Jack. Who, it's deftly noted, also has a lot of spring in his heels. Hey, sounds like that fellow in Whitechapel...
I don't want to give away too much about part 1, so I'll just skip along and say that Eileen returns for part 2, Halfway to Holiness and Jack reappears with her in part 3, Our Lady of The Wasteland And The Hallelujah Chorus. The action moves westward to a traveling revival group in Texas, whose leader is possessed by something I'm pretty sure revivalists aren't clamoring for.
The slightly dusty, historic feel of the story and the struggle between Jack and Eileen reminded me of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Instead of "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed", we have "the monster scavenged across the American west and a nun kept showing up." He wasn't exactly fleeing, though if he'd known just one more thing about Eileen, he might have hauled some serious wolfy ass. I do wish it was illustrated like The Gunslinger; there were several scenes that would have made great art.
Compared to Priest's other books that I've read thus far, Dreadful Skin is a pretty quick read (a couple hours versus about four). I did a little digging on the Mary Byrd (no pun intended) but internet findings were slim; it was not a particularly big story. My props to Cherie for choosing something that wasn't major headline fodder.
Favorite quotes:
"And in this way, too, I was reminded that Heaven watches (...) even the frightened little monsters who work so hard to be good."
"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."
The story opens on the Mary Byrd, a small ship that actually did disappear somewhere on the Tennessee River between Knoxville and Chattanooga in 1870. On board the story's version is a tipsy captain, a former slave, a professional gambler, a secretive nun named Eileen and the cursed man she has tracked across two continents, John. Who is also known as Jack. Who, it's deftly noted, also has a lot of spring in his heels. Hey, sounds like that fellow in Whitechapel...
I don't want to give away too much about part 1, so I'll just skip along and say that Eileen returns for part 2, Halfway to Holiness and Jack reappears with her in part 3, Our Lady of The Wasteland And The Hallelujah Chorus. The action moves westward to a traveling revival group in Texas, whose leader is possessed by something I'm pretty sure revivalists aren't clamoring for.
The slightly dusty, historic feel of the story and the struggle between Jack and Eileen reminded me of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. Instead of "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed", we have "the monster scavenged across the American west and a nun kept showing up." He wasn't exactly fleeing, though if he'd known just one more thing about Eileen, he might have hauled some serious wolfy ass. I do wish it was illustrated like The Gunslinger; there were several scenes that would have made great art.
Compared to Priest's other books that I've read thus far, Dreadful Skin is a pretty quick read (a couple hours versus about four). I did a little digging on the Mary Byrd (no pun intended) but internet findings were slim; it was not a particularly big story. My props to Cherie for choosing something that wasn't major headline fodder.
Favorite quotes:
"And in this way, too, I was reminded that Heaven watches (...) even the frightened little monsters who work so hard to be good."
"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."
verkisto's review
2.0
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.
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.
sarahbotreads's review
4.0
A delightfully creepy trio of stories about werewolves, a sassy nun, a boat voyage on the Mississippi, and crazy religious shenanigans. Two thumbs up.
easolinas's review
4.0
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!
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!
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review
4.0
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.
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.