WraeththuWatch update

I continue to follow the development of the Wraeththu rpg.  The new release date for the game is now the first week of September.  Meanwhile, I have acquired a copy of the Wraeththu novels (in a nice omnibus edition) via interlibrary loan.  I'm only a few pages into it, so it's hard to develop a distinct opinion, but I kinda like it.  The writing is a little clumsy in spots but overall it's not bad.  So far the story is developing as a coming-of-age adventure narrative.  The homosexual elements seem almost secondary at this point, but that may only be because I haven't reached the steamy parts yet.  I was a bit surprised to find that standard ornament of fantasy fiction, the hand-drawn world map at the front of the book.  But I guess I'm also surprised that I found the map so surprising.  I suppose I was expecting queer fiction to be totally different from the types of books I am used to.  Could I be any denser at this point?  I doubt it.
Anyways, here's my favorite passage so far, the first rumours about who and what the Wraeththu are:

It was said it had started as small groups of youths. Something had happened to them. Perhaps it was just one group. Perhaps, once, on a street corner of a damp, dimly-lit sity suburb, an essence strange and huge had reached out from somewhere and touched them, that first group. A catalyst to touch their boredom and their bitterness transforming it to a breathing, half-visible sentience. Oh yes, they changed. They became something like the werewolves my grandmother remembered tales of. Spurning the society that had bred them, rebelling totally, haunting the towns with their gaunt and drug-poisoned bodies; all night-time streets became places of fear. They dressed in strange uniforms to signify their groups, spitting obscenities upon the sacred cows of men, living rough in all the shunned places. The final act of outrage became their fornications amongst themselves amid the debris they had created. The name they took for themselves was Wraeththu. To distraught mothers and splintered communities, this spelt three things: death, rape, and darkness. The Wraeththu hated mankind. They were different; on the inside and on the outside. Hungry, baleful fire smouldered in their skins, you could see it looking out at you. They drank blood and burned the sanctity, the security of society, infecting others like a plague. Some even died, it is said, at their touch. But those who survived and joined them were strong and proud. Werewolves really would walk the desert again.

Stirring, eh? I can almost hear Duran Duran's "Wild Boys" playing in the distance.