The Loki Wolf

Lisa Arsenault is an elementary-school teacher in Ajax, Ontario.

Angie and her cousins are taken by their grandfather to Iceland to visit
their relatives and learn about their heritage. After some mysterious
disappearances and unusual occurrences, werewolves appear and terrorize
the children. Following much bloodshed and mayhem, Angie kills the
werewolf who was impersonating her relative (she herself has to
recuperate in hospital).

All of the children have a peculiarly matter-of-fact attitude toward
horrifying incidents, including the discovery of bags of animal viscera.
And their complacency when they are confronted with the werewolves is
completely unbelievable. In the midst of being viciously attacked by
one, Angie makes a remark about always having to clean up after the
boys. The grandfather makes totally inappropriate jokes about
shape-shifters while being stalked and while dying from a
werewolf-inflicted wound.

Apart from their unnaturally calm and flippant attitude toward
unimaginable horror, the characters have no depth or individuality. The
only thing we know about Angie is that she is preoccupied with her hair
(there are continual, tedious references to it). Also, there are many
instances of sloppy writing. For example, after a character is savaged
and dragged away by a werewolf, the author writes that they hear a cry
from him in the distance, “like Mordur was in pain”—what would you
expect him to be? The story contains too much graphic violence. Animals
and humans are slaughtered wholesale, but given the characters’
unnatural, happy-go-lucky attitude toward their predicament, the reader
is not horrified by the body count, but merely jaded. The Loki Wolf is
not recommended.