Trigger warning: Body horror
Wolf Worm takes place in the U.S. in 1899. It follows Sonia Wilson, who is a scientific illustrator. She needs work and finally finds some with Dr. Halder who resides in a remote home in North Carolina. Sonia at first wonders if she will be able to do what Dr. Halder needs when she finds some of the work of her predecessor. But then Sonia feels, well not content, but settled at the home, doing her watercolors and getting to be friends with the housekeeper and her husband, and a young girl who works at the home, Sally. But when Sonia keeps coming across animals that appear to be afflicted with some strange disease, and she notes that Dr. Halder seems to be disappearing at night to do something, Sonia can’t stop investigating to figure out what dark things seem to be happening in the nearby woods.
My main complaints about this one was how slow it was and how graphic the body horror gets. Not enough for me to not give it 5 stars though.
The book is really slow. I found myself getting sleepy while reading and wondering if we are going to get to any action. But then things pick up and I found myself fascinated by everything that gets revealed to Sonia. I would have loved even more pages about the things that Sonia discovered in the end.
The body horror part was difficult to read too after a while and anything with bugs always makes me scratch myself. I won’t lie, for a few days after finishing this one, I was trying to swat anything that came near me. LOL.
I will add that I wish that Kingfisher had included more interactions between Sonia and the housekeeper and the local healer. I get that it would have been odd since she’s white, and both women were Black. But it felt like Sonia was out there blind for most of the book when I think it would have been better to take them into her confidence.
What was crazy though is in the end Kingfisher talks about the research she did about botflies and screw worms and I think we all know about what is happening with that right now in Texas. She said she didn’t want to be doing a book that was like I told you so, but she should just call it futurism horror similar, but not the same to what Octavia E. Butler wrote.
