Werewolves are cool - finally

Curse of the Wolf Girl - Martin Millar

2010, Piatkus, 534 pages

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.