The teenager known only as Red Rider is content to cruise the streets of his urban neighborhood, doing favors for people and delivering money to his grandmother, who acts as the unofficial banker for his family. However, his predictable life is disturbed one day when a chance encounter sets a dangerous new gang, the Wolves, on his tail. Before he knows it, the Wolves have ambushed both Red and his grandmother, stolen the money, and opened Red Rider’s eyes to an even deeper danger. Possessed of an unspeakable evil power, the Wolves aren’t just a gang of werewolves, they’re a gang with some major plans. Now it’s up to Red Rider, his grandmother, and a teenage girl whose brother is mixed in with the Wolves, to seek out the werewolf hunters who defeated the Wolves in their first incarnation, generations ago. Only with that help can Red and his allies defeat the Wolves before it’s too late to stop them. But there’s a problem: Red Rider is becoming seduced by the potential power the Wolves have to offer, even as he infiltrates them, and his loyalties are fast becoming suspect.

Red Rider’s Hood is the second in Shusterman’s new Dark Fusion series, a collection of books which take classic fairy tales, merge them with mythology and other fantasy or horror aspects, and update them for a modern era. Mixing Red Riding Hood with werewolves may not be a new idea, but this book still manages to do it justice, its strengths lying in the internal monologue of the main character and his understandably torn loyalties. It’s not hard to sympathize with him as he’s forced to decide who, and what, he truly wants to be. Like Shusterman’s previous book in the series, Dread Locks, this is a fast-paced, well-told tale that makes good use of familiar elements while still spinning an entertaining story. I look forward to the next one down the line.