The Legend of the Dogman

I received an e-Galley ARC of The Legend of the Dogman, authored by David C. Posthumus, published by Timber Ghost Press, for review consideration. Edited: C.R. Langille. Cover art/design: Greg Chapman. Interior Design: Firedrake Designs. Whats follows is my honest opinion, given freely. Dogman has this whispered behind the hand, small town short of feel to the name, even though it ends up covering almost a whole state and going back centuries; you’d expect to be laughed at for fearing it. We had something similar in my Texas town that went by the name of, I kid you not, Goatman. It lived in Cameron Park and you were not supposed to go there at night. The truth was we had a bad drug problem in town, and it was worse in the park at night, so Goatman was a good way to scare kids into staying home, sort of. In this case Dogman has been killing on a schedule for a long ass time, the masses have just gotten to where they shrug it off and forget on schedule too. It’s description makes me think of the Dog Soldiers (2002) werewolves in height and stature, the smell like the bins for medical waste; this is not a nice cryptid, do not attempt to pet! I enjoyed most of the way the plot unfolded, the engagement of the main characters and the Dogman, but there were a few parts that fell flat for me too. Don’t know if this counts as a spoiler since this didn’t become anything in the story, but twice the main guy sees his eyes glowing similar to the Dogman. To me that seems to be setting up the story to the Dogman being a contagious sickness, but it is never expanded or explained. I think some of the execution towards the end didn’t mesh, from the build up of fate to the ambiguous ending. It was a middle read for me because of these, I had parts I really appreciated, parts that were fine and a few parts that were not for me. I think that you should give it a read if you like cryptid, supernatural, folk tales, fantasy and horror fiction.