Werewolves always seem to get the short end of the stick. When it comes to the undead, it's always Vampires who get all the attention. Everybody considers them so sexy and cool with their pasty white complexions and unusually good fashion sense. Vampires always seem to be portrayed as having money, living in fancy castles in exotic locals, and, of course, getting their choice of buxom mortals to snack on.

More often than not, when you meet a werewolf for the first time in a story or movie you're not left with a favourable impression, as they're usually ripping someone's throat out. They never get to wear fancy clothes in the movies, partly due to the tendency for clothing to suffer during their transformation from human to wolf. (There is some debate as to what happens to a werewolf's clothes after they change from human to wolf, and more specifically, what they do about their clothing situation when they convert back to being a human). Then there's the whole bestial thing - there's just no talking to them when they change into their wolf selves.

So it can't be an easy life being a werewolf in the first place, but can you image what it must be like if you were a teenage werewolf, filled with all the usual adolescent angst, and being outlawed by your family? That's the situation that 17-year-old Kalix MacRinnalck finds herself in as the heroine of Martin Millar's The Lonely Werewolf Girl, published by Soft Skull Press, and distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada.

In a fit of anger, young Kalix attacked and almost killed her father, the Thane of the MacRinnalck clan, and for that crime had to flee the families ancestral home in Scotland and seek shelter in the mean streets of London. In spite of her tender years, and being skinny to the point of emaciation as a human, Kalix is a fearsomely powerful werewolf when the battle rage takes her. She was born during a full moon, when werewolves are unable to resist the change, so she and her mother were both in their werewolf forms. The majority of werewolves are born as humans, so when Kalix changes into her werewolf form, she becomes twice as fierce and powerful as kinsman double her size.

All things considered, this is a good thing, since not only has she been outlawed by the family, but the clan's ruling council has demanded she be brought back to stand trial for nearly killing her father. Some of them aren't too fussy about what shape she shows up in for the trial; in fact, some (like her eldest brother Sarapen) would be happy if only her heart were to show up for the trial. All of this means that Kalix finds herself having to be continually on her guard against being captured or killed by minions of the family's various factions. Her circumstances are complicated even further by the fact that she is so filled with self-loathing that she's not only anorexic as a human but has developed a taste - well, more like an addiction - for laudanum.