Strange New Moons: Fresh Take on Werewolves

Strange New Moons: Fresh Take on Werewolves

‘Strange New Moons’ is the latest offering from French Press and like any good lycanthrope there’s always more than merely what’s on the surface of this anthology. Despite names like Tim Lebbon and Simon Clark’s being attached to the project – and I’ll hold my hands up and say they were the stories I was anticipating most fervently – it’s a refreshing boon for the anthology that so many names I’d never heard of populate the contents page.

Better still, no topic feels off limits, and from the inversions of the genre to the integration of action and emotions across the tales, it proves why there are some genres which no silver bullet can kill. There are solid number of high points and the peaks outweigh the troughs – and so without further ado, these were my absolute favourite of its offerings:

The first of which is ‘Seamus’, by Keawe Melina Patrick – a ‘The Silence of the Lambs’-style take on a werewolf/captor relationship. Almost certain to go on my “top ten short stories” list of 2025, it inverts the veterinary care scenario and adds something violently organic and warpingly human. Both the captor and the werewolf are supremely fleshed out and provide a character study that works, whether or not you think these aspects of lycanthropy have been explored previously.

If nothing else, it’s the perfect story to have early on in the anthology because it ensures the anthology’s fangs are sharpened before its other truly powerful bites later on. Without pre-disgusting you it is hard to say too much, yet Patrick provides one of the most original stories in a subgenre I think has become aggressively over-saturated during the last decade.

Kayleigh Dobb’s ‘That Time of the Month’ is another high of the anthology. I say this with a little hypocrisy, since I’m usually very grumpy about anthologies where the editor includes their own stories – however, that grumpiness peters out when the editor’s story is good. And this one most certainly is.

Catching you off guard by being a unfaltering comedy, underneath its furry hide there’s a nice political angle nevertheless, exploring the one night of the month where werewolves transform through the eyes of a chauvinistic man who you love to hate. It could have maybe been a few pages shorter and the pace therefore been sharper, but it’s a fabulous demonstration of how stories can wrong-foot you in the most delightful of ways and testament to how an author who writes stories with a toothy lupine grin on their face can bleed onto the page in the most energetic of ways.

Despite the comedic angle you might expect from a story entitled ‘Who Keeps Shitting on the Memorial Fire Tower?’, Somer Canon’s contribution to the anthology is anything but. Playing off the ludicrousness of the situations within it, after a few subverted expectations it taps into ethos of every 80s slasher ever made and gives you character believable in their banter and rather frictional outlook. 

Canon’s tale is likely the most traditional of the stories, it has to be said, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. The prose demonstrates both emotional intelligence and a knowing sense about the genre. In taking a simple premise and running with it, sometimes you get a story that just *works* because it’s done well and exchanges experimentalism for iron-clad attention-grabbing. She focuses on getting the basics right, giving you a werewolf tale you know and love but with a knack for being cold-blooded and severe whenever such a thing is called upon.

For obvious reasons, the twist in ‘Lark’ is best kept a secret so it can sink its canines into you without warning. But it competes to be the anthology’s finest story and Amanda Headlee’s ability to find a premise so simple and yet so slicing is incredibly effective. Something incredibly instinctual leads the narrative, both into its peaks and troughs and all those splendid fogs of uncertainty along the way.

The flow of Headlee’s prose may be a little irregular, but that adds a charm to it, translating the emotions within the story into the narrative’s dimensions. There’s something all too brilliant about the way its toothy grin grows as it watches your blood curdle. Best of all, it leaves you with questions, and while it’s best that no sequel or prequel should ever be written to it, part of why it’s impressive is because it leads you the down the garden path of imagining the story’s ramifications as much as leaving you guessing at emotionally-fraught tangle of reactions necessary for the characters’ psychologies to be as they are. 

Simon Clark provides the anthology’s denouement, ‘Red in Tooth and Law’, a story which until its final few pages feels like a scene you could have ripped out of a long list ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ episode. Clark’s prose is infinitely enrapturing as he details one werewolf’s attempts to stop a ‘Feral’ (a werewolf with no self control) in a shop while also dealing with its annoying clientele.

There’s no shortage of action here, and so if you want your blood to pump and end the anthology with your own hackles raised, it does the job perfectly. Its character-work is frustratingly real and what it lacks in its mildly predictable plot it recuperates by fighting tooth and claw to keep you hooked.

If nothing else, ‘Strange New Moons’ is a love letter to the werewolf genre by authors more than capable of demonstrating there’s life in that old dog yet. There was only story I actively disliked, and that’s more because of personal preference than any flaw in the narrative. Otherwise, you’re in for a treat with the stories from the likes of Tim Lebbon and more, but utterly spoiled with the stories I’ve previously mentioned. 

Strange New Moons

You can hardly swing a dismembered deer carcass these days without hitting a “No vampires, no zombies, and no werewolves” sign on an anthology.

Well, to that we say “Pshaw!” And also, “Awooo!”

Because what readers really don’t like are dull werewolf stories. So, we tasked the horror community with writing the weirdest, wildest, most creative, utterly bonkers tails (ha!) of lycanthropic lunacy possible.

And did they ever deliver! Wait until you read:

– a brutal, boneshattering peek at the kind of “dogfights” the super-wealthy watch to amuse themselves

– a story of two inquisitive city employees trying to find out who (or what!) keeps pooping on a local landmark

– a ride along with a delusional cop trying to prevent the total werewolf apocalypse. Werepocalypse!

Plus werewolf Frankenstein! And werewolves in space! This book is all gore and no bore.

With a lineup running the gamut from brand, spanking new cubs to heavyweight timber alphas, you’d have to be the weakest elk in the herd not to slobber all over…

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