4 out of 4 stars
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Dehumanized by Michael Loring tells the story of Ryan Zachery, a recent high school graduate, who made a mistake one night and pays for it with his life.
The story begins with reports dating back to 1977 where in Romania, pandemonium has crossed the nation as a government experiment goes awry and releases a deadly and incurable infection that enters the bloodstream through a cut or scrape. Once infected, the person goes through a very painful transformation that occurs during the full moon. The reports of the “infected” have grown to unimaginable numbers and the disease now known as “Lycanthropy” has spread worldwide!
Present day we meet Ryan Zachery who, under the influence of alcohol, decides to walk home from his graduation party. Being intoxicated on alcohol and high on possibilities for the future, Ryan is preoccupied and walks the wrong way. This proves to be life changing. An unknown assailant attacks Ryan and when he wakes in the hospital he is informed he has been “infected” and is immediately taken by armed guards. He is transported to a camp in Eastern Canada, which according to the media is a safe haven for “werewolves”, until a cure is found. Ryan is distraught, he believes that they have taken him by mistake, until the first full moon when he and hundreds of others are thrown naked into cages and undergo the excruciating transformation from human to wolf. He wakes the next morning with the horrible realization that he is a monster! Is he really the monster though?
There are hundreds just like him in this camp alone. They are treated like animals, constantly brutalized by the guards, served rotten meat for every meal because that is what animals eat and being subjected to cruel experiments by the doctors in the facility. Ryan just wants to be left alone, he tries to spend his days in solitude staring out the fence and wishing for things to be the way they were or wishing he had just died that night, anything would be better than this. The more he tries to keep to himself the more the other prisoners, the guards and worst of all the scientists single him out. He is "volunteered" into an experiment by the maniacal Dr. Scott where he is forced to transform before the full moon. This transformation awakens the wolf within and allows Ryan to not only communicate with the wolf but also change outside the full moon. This sets off a chain of events in which Dr. Scott stops searching for a cure and completely goes off the deep end experimenting on Ryan to create a new breed of werewolf.
This story was amazing! Michael Loring has introduced us to a completely new take on Lycanthropy. The story is very well written with very few errors throughout, nothing that impedes readability at all. I found myself completely sympathizing with Ryan and hating the guards. I felt that the guards and the scientists were the actual animals in the story. There are many side characters in the story as well and all of them are equally well crafted. There was never a dull moment in the book. It is quite graphic and written in such detail that I was able to “see” and “feel” what each character was going through.
Really the only thing I did not like was that I never found out what the original experiment was that caused the Lycanthropy. There are moments where you are on the verge of finding out but of course, you never do. It is like when your favorite show ends the season on a cliffhanger and you have to wait until next season to find out! I will be looking for book two (probably obsessively), and when it comes out I will gladly read this one again!
I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars! I highly recommend this book to anyone who is into the sci-fi/fantasy genre. Though it may be classified as such there is also romance and horror throughout. I would not recommend this book for anyone under the age of 18 as it is very graphic.
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Dehumanized
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The book was fantastic. I highly recommend it. 
