With one story I didn't like at all, and one story I very much enjoyed, I was eager to see just where this tie-breaker from Barker would land me. Unfortunately, it really didn't do much decide me either way on his work.
First off, I love the title of this piece. Just reading it gave me a little chill and sense of foreboding. Great set up. Of course, it also set my anticipation for some towers. Every page I thought, surely there are going to be some towers coming soon, right? But no. Unless I missed something completely, the only object that might be construed as a "tower" is the ruined building Ballard goes to at the end. A shame. Of course he could have been going for something more symbolic, but if so it was lost on me.
The story itself isn't a bad one. I was completely thrown off guard by the spy thriller set up, it wasn't what I was expecting at all, but that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. After all, I like spy thrillers so I settled into it pretty easily. Barker's prose is solid, as usual, and he spends a lot of time letting us get to know Ballard. For all that time, though, I really didn't feel anything for him. In fact I never grew attached to any of the characters. Perhaps this was due to Ballard's own detachment. Everything felt as if it were being held off at arms length.
What I did like was the way he worked werewolves into a spy story. Sort of a Jason Bourne deal with the government using subdued werewolves as super spies. I liked that premise a lot. I actually think it would have made a much better novel than a short story. But Barker handles it well.
What didn't work for me was the ending. Ballard just wanders off to an abandoned building that seems to be a werewolf hangout and... what? I really got no sense of what Barker was going for here. It seems there are a lot of werewolves, but I'm not sure if they have full control over their forms. It seemed like they didn't. If not, how are they surviving here on their own? Is the out of context passage from Genesis supposed to be a call to action? Lets go subjugate the world? It just fell flat for me. I needed more.
Overall I couldn't really like or dislike this story. It wasn't bad, but it didn't garner any kind of emotion from me at all. Certainly not fear or horror. And so my opinion of Barker remains neither high nor low. Unfortunately, that means I likely wont read any more of his works. There just hasn't been enough to inspire me to do so.
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