Kit Whitfield, Benighted

Benighted

Kit Whitfield

Del Rey, Sept 2006, $19.95, 544 pp.

ISBN 0345491637

On an alternate Earth almost identical to ours except for one major difference. Ninety-nine percent of the population is lycos who change at the full moon into mindless ravaging beasts. The other one percent is norms that are considered genetic freaks and these "barebacks" (a racist insult) all work for the Department for the Ongoing Regulation of Lycanthropic Activity (DORLA). Their job is to protect the Lycos from each other or barebacks and represent them if their crimes are so severe they end up in the courts.

Lila Galley, a norm who works for DORLA, is devastated when her friend and fellow worker Johnny loses his hand to a lycos attack. Later on he is murdered and the person under scrutiny is Mr. Ellaway woo Lola is supposed to defend. On a search for information with her trainee Marty, three werewolves attack Lola and him. They arrest the Lycos for attempted murder. They roughly question the perp Darrel Seligmann who later escapes. One of the people who questioned him is killed with a silver bullet, the same kind of bullet that killed Johnny. Lila elects to stay on the job while those who questioned the perp elect to be relocated until the danger is over. Moving in with her lycos boyfriend, Lila realizes her life is in danger and she could be killed if she doesn't find Seligmann soon and figure the link between the trainee and Johnny.

Kit Whitfield has written a great urban fantasy because of her brilliant world-building skills that create a lycanthropic culture where people who can not change into wolf form are considered freaks. The "barebacks" work for the Lycos in a realm where there is much prejudice between the two groups. The lycos look down on barebacks who are second class citizens who work for the lycos. The protagonist struggles to accept her place in this world where she is in the abyss of intense prejudice.

Harriet Klausner