Whoohoo! Finished book number three of the year!

And what was my third book? Bitten by Kelly Armstrong. Originally, I had G pick this up as a possible Christmas gift for my mother. I had mistakenly thought it was about vampires, but it ended up being about werewolves. No biggie though, my mom is equally fond of both. However, it ended up that G found the book he originally wanted to give my mom (which was about vampires), so I ended up keeping Bitten.

I'd heard of this book awhile ago. Kelly Armstrong is from Toronto and took the same Romance Writing course I took, from the same instructor. As she has gone on to be published, of course Brian (the course instructor) trotted out her name to prove that some of his alumni do go on to get published. Which actually, was nice to know.

So, having the book in my posession, I decided to give it a shot.

It's not great.

I's not bad either; the fact that some of it is set in Toronto is always amusing, since not a lot is actually set in Toronto. It's told in a first person narrative, through the eyes of the 'only female werewolf in the world', Elena. Elena has a cliche ridden angsty background that drove me up the wall (orphaned tragically at a young age, brought up in foster homes and abused repeatedly. I don't doubt this happens, but really, it would be so much more refreshing if this sort of thing didn't happen all the time in order to make a character more... edgy) and she dithers more about decisions than Hamlet does, which also makes her rather annoying.

Armstrong does create her own werewolf mythology, and she maintains her internal consistency well, but I find her writing style falls victim to her often repeating herself, or hitting you over the head with her central motifs of how angry Elena is with everything, but how she has to accept it etc. The secondary characters aren't all that interesting, in fact, I also found them pretty cliche; the attractive, intelligent, dangerous, lone wolf ex-boyfriend; the patient, intelligent, talented Alpha male pack leader, etc. I found that I didn't really bond with any of these characters much at all.

As I said, it wasn't a horrible read, I mean, I did finish the book, but I know there are more in this series about Elena, and I doubt I'll be rushing out to pick 'em up.

And now after three fairly 'fluffy' books, I'm feeling the need to read something a little more... weighty I think.

Oh, and I'm half way through a re-read of Guy Kay's The Summer Tree.