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Vex E Kalix. La Maledizione Delle Ragazze Lupo (2010)

by Martin Millar(Favorite Author)

4 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8876251049 (ISBN13: 9788876251047)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Fazi, collana Lain

series

Kalix MacRinnalch

review 1: First off, I have to confess that I absolutely love Martin Millar. Throughout the nineties and noughties he produced some of the most brilliant, concise, tongue-in-cheek, contemporary fantasy novels ever written. When you read Millar you can pretty much guarantee certain tropes; you will meet characters that you should hate but wind up loving or wanting to protect within a handful of (his notoriously compact and economically written) chapters; there will be musicians/poets/writers/game fanatics aplenty; there will also be supernatural characters ranging from fairies to minor goddesses and just about everything in between, but none of this will seem remotely out of the ordinary after a few pages; many of the characters are either damaged in some way or professional copers b... moreut this too is handled without the usual angst that writing about people with mental physical or emotional issues often invites. The latter point probably has much to do with Martin Millar's own well documented history on or off medication and his crippling agoraphobia, which he writes about with much humour and pathos in his blogs. Curse of the Wolf Girl, which sounds like a pretty corny title until you realise that it's actually the title of a pretty corny comic book given to the central character Kalix (who just happens to be a werewolf, and HATES the comic with a passion... then goes on to try and collect every copy in an effort to improve her practically non existent reading skills) ...but anyway, Curse of the Wolf Girl is actually a sequel to the wonderful Lonely Werewolf Girl, which follows the increasingly chaotic life of a teenage exiled werewolf, Kalix McRinnalch, banned from returning to the castle of her ancestors in the Scottish Highlands for attacking and killing her father, the Thane of the werewolves in a blind full moon induced rage. Kalix as a consequence of her inability to deal with her werewolf rages also suffers from chronic anxiety and an array of disorders from bulimia to self harm, but is rescued from the streets of London and cared for by a pair of well meaning students, Daniel and Moonglow, who work hard to try and restore her self esteem, often against the odds. Kalix is not the only member of her clan out of favour with the Scottish werewolves though and also in London is her sister, the famous fashion designer (and rare werewolf sorceress) Thrix and their cousin Dominil, a studious beauty famed for her intelligence and lack of emotions, who is pitted in this installment against a spurned former student from Oxford University, determined to prove to her that he is smarter than her and that she was wrong to turn down his advances and steal his place on the college quiz team many years before. Which would all be fine and dandy but he is also now a werewolf hunter, part of the Avenaris Guild who have dedicated themselves to hunting down and killing every werewolf in the country.The pace in these stories never lets up from beginning to end. There is no chapter in the book that does not have a purpose and although there is a cast of hundreds, the reader is never allowed to lose track of who they all are and why they exist. Oh, and it's incredibly funny as well. And there's now a third book in the series. What's not to love?
review 2: I have read Millar’s other works and I loved ‘The Good Fairies of New York’ and the first in the wolf girl series ‘Lonely Werewolf Girl’. Both of those works are dazzling and some of the best urban fantasy reading I have ever done. The follow up to ‘Lonely Werewolf Girl’ is somewhat of a disappointment. Picking up from the first novel we see Kalix the teenage werewolf trying to make a normal life, she is attending school and trying to get along with everyone. A series of events bring back into conflict with the clan and with the guild who hunt werewolves. That is about as basic as I can make the story because it is anything but that. The world Millar has created is dense, believable and a wonderfully created. The characters lift off the page and are flawed to perfection. The dialogue is sharp, witty and you are continually engaged in the story. Why was I disappointed with the story?For me, there just seemed to be an awful amount of set-up and it became repetitious. I do not know how many times I had to read Kalix whinge about not wanting to go to College, how many times Vex went on about gold stars, how much more I could take of Malveria going on about fashion and Daniel pining over Moonglow. I needed some action or a character to change direction and it was not happening for the first two-thirds of the novel. Do not get me wrong it was not a slog but I wanted things to happen and they were taking an awful long time to come about. Millar is one of my favourite authors as he takes a unique view in the worlds he creates. This is a good read and highly enjoyable but for me just a little disappointing in that I was hoping for more. That is not the author’s fault but my expectations are too blame. If you want to be far removed from the paranormal fantasy romance genre then this is the world to step into. It is brilliant. less

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