Did you know DogSS of War, in its original iteration, was published in the Czech Republic? It was called Řád vlkodlaků, which apparently means The Order of Werewolves.

I am not a fan of that title. What order are they putting the werewolves in? From oldest to youngest? Tallest to shortest?

I deliberately did not use the word werewolf in the book. I used the word dogman instead. Werewolves was too noble of a term for the characters. Plus, if you take the “n” off “dogman” and you get “dogma.”

Anyway, before the original publisher of DogSS of War went defunct, they sold English language rights to the Czech Republic for the princely sum of $1,000. (I never received my share, but that is neither here nor there at this stage of the game.)

The fun part of all of this is that there are reviews of Řád vlkodlaků out there! Thanks to the translating capabilities of Google, we can read them.

I was satisfied. My expectations were not high, but I was all the more pleasantly surprised. It is actually a book version of what I would call a cliché of action movies. And this can be seen both in the formation of the Allied commando, such as a muscular fool, and during the entire ensuing conflict. Most of the story is a bloody action starring SS werewolves. I recommend it to fans of the genre.

Solid review — simple and to the point. The reader also gets a gold star for noticing that I was deliberately referencing action movies throughout the story. The reason why becomes clear when one finds out where the box ended up. Plus, the reviewer gave a recommendation. I salute you, Czech Republic reader!

The next review is a bit less positive…

I’ve never read anything worse. It’s disgusting in every way. I’d rather skip something about Marxism / Leninism …

He’s never read anything worse? I suppose that is an accomplishment in my favor, even if it is of the dubious variety. At least I made an impression!

Disgusting in every way…well, that’s like, your opinion, man…

Finally, it sounds like he’d rather read something by Marx or Lenin? I’m not sure how I provoked that reaction. Maybe he is referencing the fact that I wrote about Nazism in the book? But I think it was pretty clear that Nazism was not being promoted. Oh well, who knows how things came across in the translation.

We will actually get to that in a later review…

For now, we got another short one:

The book fascinated me with its cover and did not disappoint. The wartime involvement is without a mistake.

Another happy customer! I am not sure what the translation of “the wartime involvement is without mistake” is trying say. Maybe he is saying he enjoyed the action scenes and thought they were flawless? That is what I will tell myself he is saying!

Now for the review that mentions translation information…

The Order of Werewolves is exactly what you would guess from the point of view of the book — a great junk, where American soldiers and Nazi werewolves cut each other, all in the backdrop of World War II. Of course, this also includes a number of illogicalities and absurdities, which range from the characters to the very motif of lycanthropes. Unfortunately, the weakest element is the text itself. But here I’m afraid that this time it’s not just the author who’s on the trick. Which is justified by one of the footnotes from the translator:

The most vulgar expressions are not translated anywhere in the book in the Czech equivalent !!! “Verpiss dich Arschloch!”, Perhaps: “Jerk your leg, idiot!”

It is obvious that for Václav Pauer the whole book was “barely acceptable” and the ethics of the craft hardly tells him anything. Well, the text looks like that, too. Thanks to this, the otherwise quite straightforward and simple horror massacre took over. Nevertheless, I highly recommend it to all fans of protruding entrails, scattered brains and flying limbs.

First of all, I love that he calls the book “a great junk!” I think he means to say it was trashy-fun. That was one of my goals with the book. I wanted to write something that was pulpy but that also contained a dash of literary merit.

I would be interested to hear what he thought was illogical and absurd in the story. For example, why is the use of werewolves absurd?

Werewolves are no more absurd than vampires or zombies.

Again, I am grateful for the reviewer highly recommending the book.

What I find most interesting is that the reviewer claims the vulgarities were edited out of the book and that the translator found the book “barely acceptable” because of them.

I actually agree with this. I believe the vulgarity and some of the gore in the original version was distracting. My original intention was to push that stuff to an uncomfortable degree in order to avoid glorifying it, but an editor should have dialed it back to the ideal degree.

Unfortunately, I did not get a lot of editorial help the first time around. The first proof they sent me literally contained zero changes, except for — and I found this completely ridiculous — the editor went through and broke up any paragraph/dialogue that was over three sentences.

That was maddening. They simply went in and hit the “enter” key in what seemed like random places to break everything up into snippets. Paragraphs were inexplicably broken so that the train of thought and action was lost. Dialogue was also inexplicably splintered, so you would lose track of who was talking. I was absolutely dumbfounded by their choices.

Fortunately, the publisher got a new editor before the book went to press, and I was able to remove all of those random breaks. Nevertheless, due to the shortened timeframe, that editor also didn’t get a chance to make any changes.

Eventually, I had to take it upon myself to get the book properly edited, and I consider my DogSS of War version to be improved in that department.

And there you have it: four reviews from the Czech Republic and three of them positive! I can live with that. Ultimately, I don’t mind of people don’t like DogSS of War. If they paid a ticket to ride, they reserve the right to express their feelings on the matter: good or bad. That is the function of art. It is put out there to be judged.