Kalix MacRinnalch is a lonely girl even when she was surrounded by family. She doesn''t understand them and they don't even try to understand her. There''s her arrogant, throat-grabbing, bully of a brother Sarapen with his paws set on the thaneship and a death threat on her head. Her other brother, the elegant mama''s boy Markus, couldn''t care less about his sullen younger sister except by throwing a few threats her way, too. There''s her sister Thrix, the Enchantress, too busy making a living for herself in the human fashion industry and appeasing the temperamental fire queen who happens to be her primary customer to have any time to babysit a confused adolescent. And there''s no point in even mentioning the nature of her relationship with her beautiful and intelligent cousin Dominil or her crazy self-absorbed twin cousins Butix and Delix. Kalix is troubled enough already without having to be embroiled in those sorts of clan politics. A half-empty bottle of laudanum and a diary seem to be everything to a melancholic, heart-broken, volatile werewolf hiding-out in rain capital, London. Until, one night, she meets two humans who open their door to the strangely scary but cuddly were-girl. After that, the Runaways and Sabrina the teenage witch get added on to that list, too. Just when Kalix starts getting comfortable, however, she suddenly finds herself in high demand by everyone, and much to their frustrations, nowhere to be found! It''s about time everyone turns their attention to the lonely werewolf girl.
I started reading this book a long while ago, and just slowly ate my way through it since then. Each chapter is on average two pages long - '236 chapters complete this crazy melodrama. This way of organizing the story sometimes worked well sometimes not so much, in my opinion. There were many times when I got frustrated because the chapters would end so soon without telling very much, and then I had to cycle through the viewpoints of all the other characters before coming back to the viewpoint of said character and sometimes, still being frustrated after the wait. There were some points where I kind of got mad at the author, too, because he would repeat things he had already mentioned in other short chapters, so there were all these scatterings of short chapters, some of which didn''t really add much to the story.
That said, I still ended up enjoying how the tale unfolded. Reading this book is similar to watching soaps. It reads like a miniseries, where there are tons of love triangles and back-stabbing and death threats. But no, this is not a depressing novel. Martin Millar writes with humour and honesty, despite the crazy situations he puts his characters in. He writes humanity into these supernatural beings, making them at turns hilarious, at turns pitiable, at turns hateful. I can''t tell you how many times I wanted to wring Sarapen''s neck or hug Kalix or slap sense into Vex. The best parts of the story were the dynamic relationships between the characters. Who becomes who''s enemy then becomes who''s friend then becomes who''s lover then becomes who''s enemy again? That in itself entertained me to pieces.
Read more reviews by Sharry at [...]
