BOOK & BLOG |
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March 5, 2009 Books of the Week:
These books are all within the same genre, roughly, but that’s all they have in common. I almost got whiplash moving from one to the other. I’ve got to say, though there’s hardly any character who’s sympathetic, I LOVED The Lonely Werewolf Girl. I hadn’t read Martin Millar before, and I bought this book on a whim. This is a multiple point of view book, but the lonely werewolf girl of the title is Kalix, the semi-illiterate, drug-addicted, bulimic, incredibly violent, daughter of a wealthy Scots clan of werewolves. Kalix is living on the streets of London since she’s a fugitive from the other MacRinnalchs. She’s also being pursued by werewolf hunters. Through a series of blunders, she’s brought into the student household of Moonglow and Daniel, two ordinary humans whose lives are changed forever by the introduction they receive into the supernatural world. In quick succession, they meet Kalix’s sister, the Werewolf Enchantress, and her unpredictable friend the Fire Queen. No member of the MacRinnalch Clan is exactly normal, but every one of them is memorable. I won’t attempt to summarize the plot, which involves a war of succession, the Fire Queen’s wardrobe, and the resuscitation of the career of two werewolf rockers, Beauty and Delicious. Kim Paffenroth’s Dying to Live is a Christian zombie novel. I never thought I’d read such a book, but then, why not? Using zombies as a metaphor for all kinds of things, Paffenroth’s book follows an English professor named Jonah Caine (no, no significance THERE), making his way across America without a purpose. Civilization is gone, and his family is missing. He falls in with a survivor group led by a sort of guru, a benevolent man named Milton who can pacify zombies (nope, no parallels there, either). Despite the occasional heavyhandedness, it’s an interesting book that makes some points that don’t usually fall within the zombie novel purview. I love just about everything Rachel Caine writes, and Undone is no exception. This first book in a new series is the story of Cassiel, who has been stripped of her djinn attributes until she’s trapped in a human body with the skills of an earth warden; this isn’t going to be easy to follow unless you’ve read some of Caine’s Joanna Baldwin books. Cassiel is just as compelling as Caine’s other characters, and at first, I thought I understood where she was going with Undone, but I proved to be wrong. Instead of a slow adjustment to the state of being mortal and mutable, Cassiel is plunged into disaster after disaster. My only issue with the book was that it ends so abruptly you feel that you’ve had to slam on your brakes. BLOG I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I also blog for my newsletter group, Femmes Fatales. (http://www.femmesfatalesauthors.com) I just posted a blog on that website, and I’m going to refer you to that blog. Really, I haven’t done anything much this week. I’m working on Sookie 10, which so far remains unnamed. I’m editing stories as they come in for the next anthology Toni and I are putting together. I’m working every Wednesday in Lent at a soup luncheon, and I had to make six gallons of red beans & rice. It took hours. And hours. My sacrifice for Lent is working with other people, since it’s definitely an effort for me, even when I love the people. There’s a reason writers work by themselves. We’re attending softball games (Daughter hit a home run Monday night), and just generally getting on with our lives. I’ll try to think of something more exciting next week! Charlaine Harris |
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