Amazon.ca
Successful journalist by day, the world's only female werewolf by night,
Bitten's Elena Michaels agonizes over ordinary girl stuff like her weight, her career, and her sexy new live-in boyfriend. The last thing she wants to do is return to the pack but, as Kelley Armstrong reveals in her hit horror debut, no matter how desperately Elena tries to leave her animal nature behind, once bitten there's no going back:
I stretch and blink. When I look around, the world has mutated to an array of colors unknown to the human eye, blacks and browns and grays with subtle shadings that my brain still converts to blues and greens and reds. I lift my nose and inhale. With the Change, my already keen senses sharpen even more. I pick up scents of fresh asphalt and rotting tomatoes and window-pot mums and day-old sweat and a million other things, mixing together in an odor so overwhelming I cough and shake my head. As I turn, I catch distorted fragments of my reflection in a dented trash can. My eyes stare back at me. I curl my lips and snarl at myself. White fangs flash in the metal.
When alpha male Jeremy recalls Elena from her pseudonormal existence in Toronto to help the pack put down an uprising by solo "mutts," she encounters her charismatic ex, Clay, and the sexual charge gets downright bloodthirsty. Far more than pure horror,
Bitten is full of sly humour--on one level, it can be read as an extended PMS metaphor. Armstrong's style is winning this Canadian a serious international cult following; her Women of the Otherworld series continues with
Stolen.
--Deirdre Hanna
From Publishers Weekly
It's not easy to find a fresh angle for the werewolf theme, but this debut novel from a Canadian writer proves that solid storytelling and confident craftsmanship can rejuvenate one of the hoariest of all horror clichs. Elena Michaels is a self-described "mutt," a werewolf who left her secretive pack in upstate New York for a life among humans. In the year since she relocated to Toronto, she's embarked on a career as a journalist and begun a pleasingly mundane relationship with a decent man. All this is jeopardized when she agrees to help her old packmates hunt some troublesome mutts who are converting common criminals to werewolves and leaving a trail of conspicuous carnage. Reunited with her former lycanthrope lover and forced into brutally predatory confrontations, Elena finds the call of the wild subtly reasserting itself. Armstrong prepares readers for her tale's twists with several key revisions of werewolf lore the werewolf taint is mostly hereditary, and werewolves can be killed as easily as any human or wolf. Her true achievement, though, is her depiction of werewolf nature in believably human context. Elena's feral sensibility, like her psychological vulnerabilities, seems a natural outgrowth of her abusive childhood, and her relationship with the pack is that of any prodigal child to a close-knit family. The sensuality of Elena's transformations and the viciousness of her kills mesh perfectly with her tough personality. Filled with romance and supernatural intrigue, this book will surely remind readers of Anne Rice's sophisticated refurbishings of the vampire story. Agent, Helen Heller. (Oct. 1)Forecast: The sensual, non-genre jacket design will help to signal that this novel will also appeal to mainstream tastes.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.