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.
Article comments
1 - edbles
I've tried to find a review bashing it online and I can't. But it is so sub par. I just don't understand. Martin Miller named someone Moonbeam in a book about WEREWOLVES. Who are affected BY THE MOON. And she HEALS one of them. AND he doesn't go anywhere with the plot he just keeps introducing new problems in a desperate attempt to get your attention, because dry stilted procedural writing isn't going to do it. He also doesn't really tie very many of them up at the end. The book is not funny, it is somewhat silly but it is not funny.
This sentence illustrates that we were reading two very different books.
"Along the way Martin Millar also manages to tell the story of how Kalix goes from being a lonely werewolf girl so filled with self loathing that she cuts herself and suffers anxiety attacks if she's treated well, to a werewolf girl with friends who make her realize that she's not such a bad sort after all."
Not such a bad sort? Kalix brutally murders at least 6 people throughout the course of the novel 2 of whom she's related to and feels absolutely no remorse for this behavior. O any of the other self involved antisocial behavior that she exhibits. Which I would be okay with if he just stuck to the interpretation of Kalix as insane, but all of a sudden at the end of the book she's all better because she realizes she has friends? What?
"By turn hysterically funny, terrifying, and even a little heartbreaking, Lonely Werewolf Girl is a brilliantly designed and elegantly written book."
Elegantly written?
"While waiting for the kettle to boil Moonglow wondered, what if anything, she should do about Kalix's self-cutting. It obviously wasn't something she could be dissuaded from by a few kind words. Moonglow wondered if Kalix's metal state might improve if she started to feel more secure in her surroundings."
My brother in the third grade wrote a story about a rabbit that was more elegantly crafted.
That's another thing this neutral impersonal narration in generic tone. Let's compare that with a sentence by who Martin appears to be compared to because they write about things that aren't real. Gaimen from Neverwhere:
"Richard had been awed by Jessica, who was beautiful, and often quite funny, and was certainly going somewhere. And Jessica saw in Richard an enormous amount of potential, which properly harnessed by the right woman, would have made him the perfect matrimonial accessory."
Do you see how Gaimen while still remaining in third person narration manages to communicate character without using everyone's proper names forty times in one sentence.
Don't read it you will never ever get those moments back and you would feel better about the time spent and less used if you had been tricked into clubbing baby seals.
2 - miyo
i do love this book, and i like how he puts those problems in there, and kalix is a werewolf. If i was being hunted by my brother that i didn't love, i wouldn't be sad about me killing him. I love how he made moonbeam gothic. im gothic so i really understand her charater.
3 - Areina
Personally, I think this book was poorly written. It's just very, VERY poorly written. There's a hook, a very noticable hook, but I just can't find any reason to read this in the case of quality. The writing is much reminiscent of mine when I was in... well, Kindergarden. I'd say put in more effort, but I think that would make it worse. My advice to the writer would be to hang around some writing forums online and find out why his book is so badly written. I can point out right now that it is full of Mary-Sues. He tries to hide this with obstacles, people stronger than her, and a drug addiction, but that just seems to add to her 'damsel in distress' thing. Also; he tends to name characters before introducing them. Instead of leaving a character nameless when they haven't been introduced/haven't said their name, he gives them a name. (EX: Daniel - Chapter 6: he is referred to as 'the young man' with no inclination to a name when it says ""In here!" yelled Daniel, pointing to his car." without any introduction or mention of the name before hand. Every other character had an introduction at one point before hand, but not Daniel! Is he above such things? I highly doubt it)
I must admit that I have read less than twenty pages of this book, and I do intend to read it all the way through, but I find myself thinking; "Why is this guy published? I can write better than him!"
In twenty pages I have found this book in need of a re-writing. I'll come back when I finish the book and leave a complete review, though.
-Areina
4 - x
This book was hilarious and filled with soul.