He's soon befriended by Leslie Z, a metalhead with a soft spot for glam and an encyclopedic knowledge of the guitars, amps, pedals, and mixes used in his favorite bands' music.

Kip Norvald, whose father is in prison and whose mother is no longer in his life, has just arrived to live with his grandmother and attend his last year of high school. But don't let the topic scare you off like any good novel about a subculture (or several), Wray's newest does not require prior knowledge of or interest in metal in order to enjoy it.Īfter a brief chapter that serves as a flash forward (an all too common device these days, one that often reads as if it were added in order to alleviate publishers' anxieties about hooking readers in with a mystery right from the start), the book begins: It's the late 1980s in Venice, Florida, and the local metal scene is booming to such an extent that there is now a Wikipedia page dedicated to it. If you've ever been part of a specific music scene, you know that every scene has its own unspoken rules, taboos and, of course, sense of style.Īs a once metalhead myself (my subgenres of choice: thrash, glam, and power metal), I found a great deal to enjoy in John Wray's sixth novel, Gone to the Wolves, which masterfully portrays the heavy metal scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s through the eyes of Floridian teenagers.

The Wolves in the Walls by Neil Gaiman