Review of Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland by Carlton Mellick III

One of his longest works, something labored over for longer, it seems, and continued in an equally long sequel, I found myself at times missing the brief length of his accustomed method and not necessarily wanting it to go on as long as it did. 

 It had its moments, but ultimately could not rank with his more fascinating forays into Bizarro realms.
Initially intrigued by the Mcdonaldland world-building, I flew through the first third, but once you get out into wastelands, the book becomes less interesting in my opinion. After the initial setup, it morphs into a survival tale like Richard Harding’s Outrider series, which is itself kind of a rip-off of Mad Max. It’s a familiar setting for post-apocalyptic fiction – just think of the Australian outback for reference.
Hilariously, once Mcdonalds takes over the world, the only form of food available for humanity is sold by Mcdonalds, leading to rampant mutations. A set of outrageous laws are in place, squashing any form of resistance to the common order. Dissenters are exiled into a wasteland where they are consumed en masse by mutated wolf women. These are not werewolves. They are permanently transformed giant wolves. The set up is classic Bizarro, following Cameron Pierce’s definition of Bizarro fiction. I will quote from his interview to illustrate how the inarguable examples of Bizarro fiction work:

Many people say that science-fiction is weird fiction. But the thing is, most science-fiction has only a single weird element to the story. With bizarro, there are three or more. So to make a science-fiction story bizarro, two or more weird elements should be added.
Jurassic Park – the weird element for this that makes it science-fiction is that it is about a zoo for dinosaurs. So to add another weird element, I’d change the characters from a nice family of scientists to a group of pornographers who have broken into the park in order to film bestiality fetish porn with the dinosaurs. For a third weird element, I’d make it so that the act of having sex with these dinosaurs somehow gave the actors super powers. Right there, the story would be weird enough to be labeled bizarro. I’m not sure if it would be any good, but it would be bizarro.
Many bizarro story ideas start out as completely ridiculous and sometimes flat out stupid, as the above example proves. It is the challenge of the bizarro writer to turn these stupid ideas into something actually worth reading.

Therefore, the premise succeeds where something like Mellick’s book “Zombies and Sh-t” doesn’t qualify.

In the wasteland, we learn more about how roving bands of wolf ladies track down and hunt mutant men. They form a collective, like prides of lions, where they must prove their worth in combat, variously devouring prey and abusing one another. Our protagonist is taken prisoner and mutilated, used as a slave to further transform women into the colossal wolf-beasts (their final form) for which they sacrifice the last shreds of their humanity. This section takes up 2/3 of the book and consists of drawn-out battles with makeshift weapons against raiders and such, questionable artwork supplied by the author, and the usual dominatrix-type characters the author’s work is known for.

I’m not sure how the sequel will shake things up or build upon the premise. There seems to be a third installment, not yet published, titled “Pippi of the Apocalypse.” We’ll see if that ever comes out.
The author’s best long work in the survival genre is Tumor Fruit if you ask me. This may be worth it for Carlton Mellick completionists.