The Werewolves Are Back

A lesser writer might have made this plague the product of some sinister government bio-weapon project, but Percy isn't interested in ersatz monsters; in his world, those carrying the Lobos infection have been side by side with us for centuries, manifesting as Native American "skinwalkers" and as a fragile "Lycan Republic" gouged out of the Russian-Finnish border after the defeat of Nazi Germany. A certain level of self-control can keep a lycan from transforming, while prejudice keeps lycans a suspected class: the civil rights movement of this world involved lycans, and in the era paralleling our own, mandated blood tests and medications are among the legal restrictions on the minority. And the US military, in a mordant echo of recent history in Iraq and Afghanistan, are engaged in a long-term slog to bring "order" to the Lycan Republic.