Following the death of his beloved mother, young Skinner Cade discovers he was adopted. Determined to find his true origins, he travels westward from the Mississippi Delta to the deserts of Arizona. There, Skinner learns of Changing Woman, the mysterious leader of the Coyotero who might be his biological mother. 
When a misunderstanding with the cops lands him behind bars, Skinner discovers a dark and brutal aspect of himself that he believed existed only in his nightmares: He is not truly human but a werewolf. After escaping during a prison riot of his own creation, Skinner crosses paths with a pack of young werewolves posing as a punk band who draw him even deeper into a terrifying, monstrous world of bloodlust, murder, and depravity. Will Skinner Cade fight to maintain his humanity, or will he fully embrace his wild blood?

I first encountered Nancy Collins when I read her debut novel, ‘Sunglasses After Dark‘ (1989), which won the Bram Stoker Award. It featured Sonja Blue, a kickass vampire very different from the Anne Rice version. It was fresh and clever and filled with casual, graphic violence and transactional sex that felt raw and real rather than contrived and exploitative. Sonja Blue lived in a heartless, vicious, blood-spattered world so completely lacking in glamour or romance that it made other vampire books seem like Disney World.

I picked up ‘Wild Blood‘ (1994) because I wanted to see what kind of werewolves Nancy Collins would conjure up. It turned out I was in for quite a ride.

As always, Nancy Collins’ storytelling was vivid, violent, original and strangely believable. She twists the werewolf tropes just as vigorously as she did the vampire ones.

The story starts strong. It’s action-packed, violent and on a different path to most werewolf books. At the start of the book, our hero thinks he’s human, then he gets caught up in a spiral of violent misadventure that would rip most men’s humanity away. Oddly, although this process reveals his non-human nature, he mostly remains the kind, thoughtful young man he was raised to be. 

Then he falls in with other werewolves. 

Nancy Collins’ werewolves aren’t strong, decent men trying to control their wolf taint while looking for a soulmate. This isn’t a paranormal romance. These werewolves aren’t and don’t want to be human. They want to be all the wolf they can be. Humans are meat. But smart meat that needs to be stalked, not battled.  Sex is neither erotic nor romantic. It’s a rutting frenzy that fuels rape and murder. They’re not led by a wise but ruthless alpha male who enforces discipline and respect. They’re led by a highly-sexed bitch who they all fight to the death to mate with. 

It isn’t all violence and gore (although it is mostly violence and gore). There is a bigger story arc to do with our hero’s origins and with the other shifter races.

I liked the idea that the werewolves are as violent as they are not because they’ve given up control to their wolves, but because, for centuries, they’ve been behaving too much like humans.

I had a lot of fun with this book. I found the ending a little hard to swallow, mostly because it moved from the personal, immediate and threat-laden into the political, strategic and potentially peaceful. 

Even so, it was good fun. A sort of fast food horror: highly seasoned with violence and mayhem and best eaten quicklywhile it’s hot. 

I read the ebook version of ‘Wild Blood’, published by Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy in 2022. They didn’t do a great job. There were lots of typos, missing words and incorrectly substituted words. This was distracting and, given current technology, insulingly incompetent. Buy a different version if you can. 

Oh, and this is the cover they produced. It has to be one of the worst covers that I’ve seen, and it has nothing to do with the story.