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Welcome to the Cover Reveal and Book Blast for Hungry As A Wolf by Elizabeth Einspanier.

I was very lucky to get my hands on the ARC of this scary good tale and will be sharing my review.

There’s also a fun excerpt.

And a giveaway, so don’t forget to enter.

Hungry As A Wolf

Tales of the Half-Breed #2

by Author Elizabeth Einspanier

My Review

I’ve seen many movies about skinwalkers but this is one of only a few books I’ve read featuring them.

Wolf is a half-breed. Half native american and half skinwalker, but he keeps that to himself. He gets enough grief for being an indian. People would fear him, perhaps hunt him down and kill him, if they knew the truth.

Or perhaps not. Mayor Twohill has a major problem in Goldwater, located in the Black Hills. All but one of the men working his mine in the mountains failed to return after wintering there.  Upon his return, the man attacked and ate part of  the doctor who attended him. They’ve been keeping him locked up in the jail.

The poor man has gone completely around the bend. He hasn’t eaten in a month, and should be dead. This is beyond the towns capabilities and the Mayor sends a posse to fetch Wolf, placing a large bounty on his head to ensure they’ll bring him back alive.

 Wolf awakens with a rifle pointed in his face. The fools think they’re in control. Wolf’s quiet nonchalance lends an aura of menace that begs to differ. He calmly agrees to go along with them.

He’s not one to turn his back on the strange. That’s what he does. Hunts down and takes care of the things most people don’t even believe exist.

What he observes and encounters in Goldtown is something new. He’s not sure what he’s dealing with.

I loved the partnership between Wolf and his demon steed, Lucifer. He acquired the massive animal after taking care of a vampire problem.  Lucifer reminds me of the horse from Sleepy Hollow. The one the Headless Horseman rode. Huge, black, red eyes. A scary yet magnificent animal. And the only kind of horse that would allow Wolf near it.

Partially eaten bodies are being discovered around Goldtown. After Wolf tracks down whatever is stalking the town, the next step is a trip up to the mine to face whatever dwells in it’s dark depths.

Zombies, werewolves, shifters, wendigo. Whatever you want to call the creatures in these pages, they aren’t your normal ones. The author has changed them up a bit. Added some ancient lore, some intelligence, some new tics. As if these things weren’t bad enough already. Be prepared for some fun new creations.

Let’s talk setting. The author chose the Black Hills in the year 1865. I love western settings. And adding a supernatural element makes the atmosphere even more interesting. Some of the characters in this book didn’t find it too hard to believe in the beings they encountered. Perhaps they understood the lands once belonged to something else.

The author’s choice of having his characters speak in a western vernacular was great. I could almost hear their voices, their accents. Made them much more genuine and easy to visualize and connect with.

I talked about the creatures already, so lets meet Wolf. He’s part human, part skinwalker. He’s got the wolf in him and knows when to let it loose. He’s a loner, uncomfortable in crowds, and has some serious baggage. The loss of his true love, and how he lost her, haunts his every step.

When a very determined young lady crosses paths with Wolf, it’s blushes and confusion on both sides. I wasn’t sure if these two would develop a love interest, but I kind of had my fingers crossed. Finding someone new to love might heal Wolf. Let him drop his burden of guilt.

This is the second book in the series but don’t let that stop you from reading this. I jumped into it here and had no trouble getting into the story. The author slipped in some back story in just the right places so the story didn’t slow down and you could follow what was happening.

It appears to me each story will be about Wolf hunting down another strange creature and that sounds fun to me.

I wish I could have seen Mayor Twohill’s face at the conclusion to this book. There is an ending, no huge cliff hanger, and the author leads you towards another book to come.

Bring it on!

4 Stars

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Synopsis

Wolf Cowrie is back in his second adventure! In the Black Hills of the Dakota Territory in 1865, tensions run high between white settlers looking for gold and the Sioux people who consider this region their holy ground. When Wolf is hired to find out what happened to the workers of a mining outpost in the area, the general theory in Goldwater is that they were slaughtered by the Sioux. Wolf discovers something far more sinister lurking in the Black Hills, an ancient evil whose unending hunger drives sane men to ghoulish extremes.

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Enjoy this excerpt!

It was a young woman of perhaps nineteen years of age, with auburn hair and brown eyes. She was well-dressed in a white blouse with leg-of-mutton sleeves and a narrow column of ruffles down the front. A dark blue skirt respectably covered her ankles and black boots, and her hair was pulled back in a style he could not readily see from this angle, with wisps curling delicately around her face. She was a pretty little thing as well, and Wolf wished he could have made her acquaintance under better circumstances—like, say, fully-clothed, rather than stark naked with only his hat to conceal his shame.

The two of them stared at each other for maybe half a minute—him in a state of poker-faced, heart-pounding embarrassment, her in open-mouthed shock. Wolf’s heart and his stomach had lurched in opposite directions when he saw her—his heart upwards to lodge in his throat, his stomach downwards to gurgle in low panic somewhere around his knees. He swallowed hard to try to clear the lump of nerves behind his larynx. Somehow, Wolf was the first to find his voice.

“Ordinarily, miss, I’d be the first to tip my hat to a lovely young lady like yourself,” he said as politely as he could manage, with a glance down at the hat in question. “But I don’t think either of us wants that right now.”

She blushed bright scarlet and whirled out of the bathroom without a word, revealing the bun that secured her hair and slamming the door behind her. Wolf put his free hand over his face.

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Author Elizabeth Einspanier

Elizabeth Einspanier is the self-published author of the Weird Western novella Sheep’s Clothing and the upcoming sci-fi romance novel Heart of Steel. Her short stories have been published in Down in the Dirt and Dark Fire Fiction. She is a member of the St. Louis Writer’s Guild and an associate member of the Horror Writers of America. She lives in St. Louis, but frequently spends extended periods in worlds of her own creation.

Links

Website / Blog / Google + / Twitter / Amazon

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