Stephen King’s CYCLE OF THE WEREWOLF vs. SILVER BULLET |

Stephen King’s Cycle of the Werewolf vs. Silver Bullet

I tore through this novella and enjoyed it immensely.

But first, let me explain how this article came about.

The Setup

Recently, on a moonlit night, I decided to revisit an older werewolf movie I’d seen in my teen years: Silver Bullet. You may recall that it starred Corey Haim, Megan Follows, and Gary Busey. I rented it from Prime. The story is about a small Maine town and a series of brutal murders that seem animal-like in nature, a boy who has suspicions, and his sister and Uncle who try to help him convince others of the threat.

That movie is actually based on Stephen King’s novella, Cycle of the Werewolf. After watching the movie, and enjoying it, I decided to give the book a read to see how the two compare. They are actually quite different, though King also wrote the movie’s screenplay. The novella doesn’t contain a great deal of dialogue; it’s mostly exposition about what the town of Tarker’s Mills endures once each month for a full year. Each chapter takes place in a new month and is a short story in itself. In fact, there is almost no dialogue until about halfway through the story; it’s told through exposition rather than character interactions. It also doesn’t feature the Coslow family until the last half.

King had been asked about making it into a movie, and he figured a way to change the full year “cycle” into a shorter, more compressed story during just the Summer in Tarker’s Mills. He also focused on Marty Coslow, wheelchair-bound and brother to older sister Jane.

In the film, Marty and Jane have a relationship full of tension and sibling rivalry. However, once Marty claims he confronted and wounded a werewolf — the cause behind all the death and violence in the small town — Jane decides to humour him and see if she can find one of the townsfolk who might show evidence of a facial injury. It was a highly compelling element of the movie, and I’m happy to report that this story thread — that of teenagers attempting to solve the mystery — also occurs in the book.

Required Elements

The book and the movie have elements of the werewolf story (read: formula) that I feel are crucial:

there must be a small town with easily recognizable characters
the beast must attack on full moons only, at night
the townsfolk must recognize what is happening, and what is hunting them each month
there must be a sense of suspicion and hostility of those around them
there must be paranoia about who is the beast
there can only be one way to kill the beast: with a silver bullet
crafting the bullet should be a challenge
there should only be one bullet, increasing the tension at the climax

I want to note that in the movie there was only one bullet. In the book, two. However, both versions of the story stuck to these very familiar rules of the werewolf tale. (The recent movie, Wolf Man, did not.)

The novella was a very quick read, at only about 100 pages. The illustrations, by artist Bernie Wrightson, were impressive, even on the Kindle:

The Verdict

Silver Bullet is clearly a movie representative of the 1980s. It’s at times cheesy, with music that doesn’t always reflect the mood, and at times the acting by the secondary characters is … well, I’ll just leave it at that. But there are also elements of exceptional cinematography and real tension. It was fun to see Gary Busey in his role as the Uncle, pre-Lethal Weapon, and the “Boy Who Cried Wolf” theme was very clever. Also, it seemed that the culprit in the town knew what was happening when he was a wolf. He had memories of his nighttime escapades and even embraced his existence. He wants to prevent his own capture. This is somewhat different from other iterations of the story, where the werewolf awakes in the morning with no recollection of what has happened during the moonlit night. This added a criminal element to the movie that did not exist in the book at all.

King did a remarkable job of taking his series of twelve short stories and adapting them into one coherent, linear story that tells the tale of the local werewolf and how one boy saves the town. I will confess to being confused by the timeline in the movie, however. The wolf seemed to come out on more than one evening per month, and the clarity of this rule was unclear. The book was far more accurate in this regard.

Both movie and book are clever and compelling in their own ways. I particularly enjoyed the hunt for the townsperson with the injured face. It added a highly engaging dynamic to the events, both before the discovery and after.

Here’s the cover:

Big props to Stephen King for sticking to the familiar werewolf formula and telling such a gripping story, both on the page and on the screen, and adding the additional elements of mystery. I enjoyed the experience of watching and reading two different, and yet similar, tales. I recommend you give this a “shot” when the moon turns full …

But make sure that bullet is silver.

— Timothy S. Johnston

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A Blanket of Steel by Timothy S. Johnston and from Fitzhenry & Whiteside, LTD. is the recipient of the 2024 GLOBAL Thriller Award GRAND PRIZE and the 2024 CYGNUS Award First in Category.

— Timothy S. Johnston, 9 September 2025

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Praise for Timothy S. Johnston’s A Blanket of Steel

“Fans of Clive Cussler’s NUMA Files will be delighted with Timothy S. Johnston’s undersea novels. Truman McClusky and Dirk Pitt are cut from the same adventurer’s cloth.” — Nick Cutter, author of The Deep and The Troop

“Action that ranges from close range combat to torpedo-fueled attacks. The result is a thriller that keeps moving from confrontation to confrontation … with constant danger and the vast depths of the ocean as a setting, there is always reason to keep reading.” — Kirkus Reviews

“Read the book and prepare to be blown away by one of the best writers I have ever had the pleasure to read. Timothy S. Johnston is simply amazing.” — FIVE Stars from Readers’ Favorite

“A Blanket of Steel is not simply a ‘daring do’ thriller … It’s prescient.” — Amazing Stories

“A priority selection. An action-packed story that is hard to put down. A Blanket of Steel is outstanding.” — D. Donovan, Sr. Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

“Innovative technology, Mac taking risks no one else would dare and thinking his way through to brilliant solutions … But the stakes are higher than they’ve ever been before. This is it. The countdown to the final battle … Johnston does an excellent job of keeping the tension taut as he plays with the reader’s perceptions of characters we thought we knew and trusted …” — SFcrowsnest

“Expect to be left breathless. Trust me here. Please. I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN.” — Michael Libling, author of The Serial Killer’s Son Takes A Wife and Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels

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A BLANKET OF STEEL is out now!

WATCH THE GRIPPING BOOK TRAILER HERE.

FOR PURCHASE OPTIONS CLICK HERE

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A Blanket of Steel from Timothy S. Johnston and Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd.

Book Cover & Jacket Copy:

AN UNSTOPPABLE THREAT!

A mysterious assassin has murdered Cliff Sim, Chief Security Officer of the underwater colony, Trieste. Cliff was a mountain of a man, highly trained, and impossible to defeat in combat. And yet …

Someone brutally beat him and left his broken body in a secret Chinese facility at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

And included a calling card for Truman McClusky, Mayor of Trieste.

Taunting him.

Mac has led the underwater colonies in their fight against the world’s superpowers. Climate change has devastated the surface; nations suffer famine, drought, rebellion, rising waters, and apocalyptic coastal flooding. But now, as Mac leads the underwater colonies to freedom and independence, he’s faced with the gravest threat of his life: a Russian assassin, hellbent on killing Mac and everyone he cares for. Now Mac must uncover the identity of the killer, face him in combat, and at the same time lead people in battle against the largest underwater force ever assembled. It’s Mac’s final test, and to win the war, he must use every tool at his disposal, including the most surprising and devastating underwater weapons ever invented.

If Mac fails, all hope is lost for the future of human colonization on the ocean floors.

But the assassin could be anyone …

Watch your back, Mac.

A Blanket of Steel is the most gripping thriller yet in The Rise of Oceania.

FOR PURCHASE OPTIONS CLICK HERE

The other books in The Rise of Oceania series by Timothy S Johnston:

The War Beneath 9781771484718
The Savage Deeps 9781771485067
Fatal Depth 9781554555574
An Island of Light 9781554555819
The Shadow of War 9781554556007