The Black Wolves of Boston

By: Wen Spencer

Narrated by: Ian Alan Carlsen, Corey Gagne, J. Paul Guimont, Jennywren Walker

Length: 18 hrs and 15 mins

Publisher's summary

From the Romantic Times Sapphire award-winning author of the internationally best-selling Elfhome series.

Rebuild a life, save a city

Silas Decker had his world destroyed when he was attacked by vampires outside of New Amsterdam. He has rebuilt his life a dozen times in the last 300 years - each time less and less successfully. Now he lives alone, buried under a hoarding habit, struggling to find some reason to wake up with the setting of the sun.

Eloise is a Virtue, pledged to hunting evil. What she doesn't know is how to live alone in a city full of strangers who know nothing about monsters.

Seth is the 16-year old Prince of Boston, ward of the Wolf King. Now he is left in a city that desperately needs his protection with enemies gathering all around.

Joshua believes he is a normal, college-bound high school senior. His life is shattered when he wakes up in a field, covered with blood, and the prom committee scattered in pieces about him like broken dolls.

These four must now come together to unravel a plot by Wickers, witches who gain power from human sacrifices and have the power to turn any human into their puppet. Four people who lost everything struggle to save Boston by saving each other.

©2017 Wen Spencer (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

One heck of a fun book

Silas Decker is a vampire more than three centuries old, and finding it increasingly hard to keep rebuilding his life as people die and the world keeps changing. Living alone with no friends and few acquaintances, he sees less and less reason to keep trying.

Eloise is a Virtue, a soldier of God against evil. She's made being that soldier the only thing she is, lest human connections weaken her.

Seth is the sixteen-year-old Prince of Boston, a werewolf, the only survivor of his murdered family. His only living close relative is his cousin Jack, and the Wolf King, Alexander, is keeping Seth in New York, not letting him return to Boston for reasons he doesn't clearly explain.

And then there's Joshua, an ordinary college-bound high school student in small town, upstate New York, working hard to make his high school transcript look impressive for the colleges he wants to apply to. As part of that plan, he volunteers for the prom committee--and one awful Friday night, he finds himself badly hurt and covered in blood, with the rest of the prom committee dead and torn to pieces around him. Traumatized by events and further confused by a dream, or vision, or perhaps just a conversation, he had while undergoing an MRI, Joshua runs away to Boston, seeking someone he hopes will help him understand what's happened to him.

Because Joshua is now a werewolf, too.

This is a well-thought-out fantasy world, that makes good internal sense. It has action. It has great characters, who discover they need each other. It has a plot that really works.

It's also a novel set in Boston, at least to a significant degree, which does not contain the errors about Boston that kick one out of the story if one actually knows the city. I have a little list of otherwise very good writers who think they know Boston because they've studied maps and, perhaps, stayed awake in history class. (A hint I suspect applies to any geographic area: Before you use the official, found on a map name of a road in a story, check out whether that's what people who live in the area actually call it. Especially if it's a state highway running through multiple towns and counties.) Avoiding those mistakes adds a layer of reality and believability that strengthens a fantastical story. If you are using a real place in your story, and it's not a place you know intimately, check your details. All of them! Because yes, readers will notice.

But even more important than avoiding those dumb errors, which will after all only affect the readers who recognize them, is the fact that Spencer gets the characters right. Seth is affected by the trauma he experienced at thirteen, by the fact that he's the Prince of Boston and being educated that way, and has responsibilities--but also by the fact that he is, in the end, still only sixteen. Decker is lonely. Eloise has cute herself off emotionally and lived as a loner because she thinks it's the only way to do her job properly. Joshua, a year older than Seth, has not had either his emotional trauma or his education and training, and is in many ways younger. He's frightened and confused by what's happening to him.

And these four people have to come together to combat a plot by Wickers, a faction of witches that practice human sacrifice to gain magical power, to destroy Boston.

The plot, the characters, and the setting are developed convincingly and drew me in irresistibly. It's just one heck of a fun book.

Highly recommended.

I bought this book.

Joshua was a normal high school kid until...

Joshua was helping at a Halloween event with fellow students when they are horribly attacked and he finds himself on the run. Confused and disoriented, he only knows he's dangerous to those around him and he needs to find the Prince of Boston, whomever he is.

In Boston, Joshua is found by Silas Decker, who might have answers about werewolves and the strange supernatural beings Joshua is now involved with. He also meets Eloise, who is another fighter of demon - like creatures.

Wonderful stuff about Joshua ' s new life, and some pretty horrific stuff about the evil beings who are chasing after Joshua and his new acquaintances ensue!

This is a cool mix of humor and action and supernatural horror, and a touch of romance.

Interesting having different narrators reading the character parts.

Good but not great

I enjoy Wen Spencer's books and I was eager to read this one. It's fun, original, and kept my attention throughout, but it's not a great book. There is some cursory character development that I thought could have been more thoroughly executed and it would have added a lot to the listening experience. Additionally, there is some cutesy dialogue that made me cringe. If you like Wen Spencer, these things may not bother you, but they did bug me a bit. My biggest issue however was the narration. The narrator for the character of Seth was horribly miscast. The character is supposed to be nearly 16. The actor sounds like a 50 year old smoker. It just didn't work and I found it really distracting.
Aside from these issues, I did enjoy the book and think it's worth a credit.

Great Story but Difficult Listen

Let me start out by saying that I am a big fan of Wen Spencer's writing. It's always difficult to start a new series, but very quickly I was invested in what would happen to them. That said if it hadn't been written by one of my favorite authors, I would have probably turned off the book because of the performance.

First, the reader for the first chapter (yes, multiple readers; I'll get back to that) has an odd take on how to pronounce wolf. This might not be a big issue in most books, but in a story about werewolves? Well, let's just say that hearing about the woof doing this, and the woof doing that, was extremely cringe worthy.

Second, time to get back to the multiple readers. I've heard some performances that worked, but normally there are only two readers. In this case there are four main characters and the reader changes for each chapter's point of view.

Unfortunately, this was jarring. Each character has a definite voice in text already, so I really don't think this was necessary. Many times there will be a switch between characters having a conversation, which completely changes the voice of the characters in the audio book.

It's bad when multiple family members cringe at the start of a new chapter, but the performance definitely took something away from the story. I would recommend reading it on the kindle instead. I will be reading this book, and when I do, that's how I will do it.

Fun story...

...but terrible narrators. I’ve been having a bit of a bad streak with narrators lately. The story itself was fun. It was a cool take on the familiar supernaturals - vampires, werewolves, witches, even ghosts.

I wouldn’t expect anything Pulitzer-worthy - the magic system seemed a little inconsistent at times, the plot got a little bloated and confusing in parts, and there were some logic holes here and there - but it was definitely a light, entertaining read. Fast-paced and very funny in parts.

However. The narrators were so bad that I am actually going to go through them one by one and note what made them so bad.

Seth: The person narrating Seth made a 16-year-old boy sound like a chain smoker in his mid-40s...with a bad Boston accent. And when he wasn’t doing dialogue he sounded like a newscaster.

Eloise: This narrator made Eloise sound half asleep most of the time. She narrated in this weird, washed out, whispery voice, and I really don’t know what accent she was going for, but in addition to being inscrutable, it came in and out.

Silas: This one actually wasn’t *that* bad except that he kind of made Silas sound like Count von Count from Sesame Street, but without the accent. Maybe because he’s a vampire? He just read in this vaguely cartoonish way, which didn’t fit Silas, the clinically depressed, centuries-old vampire.

Joshua: This was the only narrator who wasn’t terrible. I would have preferred it if he’d just narrated the whole thing.

All in all, I think this would have been much more enjoyable had there been better narrators. In fact, I don’t know that there needed to be four separate narrators at all. So, fun read, but maybe get the physical book?

Neat, well developed fantasy story.

I enjoyed how the story progresses to build the universe and characters into a unified whole. I like both the characters and the setting. I enjoy having multiple readers to cover male and female characters separately. The "Boston" accent for those characters is believelable, at least to my sub-arctic self. I am looking forward to other books set in this universe.

Engrossing new book

I really hope this will be the beginning of a new series. The world-building was intriguing, and the characters engaging. A solid story and the narrators did an excellent job.

Possibly grooming kids listening for sexual abuse.

The story took a strange turn and a young teenage boy is taken into a 500 year old vampire's house and tricked into being kissed and fondled, then convinced he is doing it to save people...glad I listened before my child. This book appears to be grooming kids to think unwanted sexual advances are acceptable. Do not reccomend.

shrug

If you are going to narrate a book about werewolves you should be able to pronounce the word WOLF.

Fun Listen

This was a fun listen while I did house and garden chores. Four narrators were not really necessary. One talented male reader and one talented female reader would have worked well. This is really more of a Y A book and I would assume, a series to come. The storyline give lots of opportunities for future fun.