  Saturday, May 24, 2008  Lonely Werewolf Girl  Martin Millar's
new novel, Lonely Werewolf Girl, is a puzzlement to me. A
puzzlement because I kept being annoyed with it, and came close
to shutting it and giving up more than once, and yet I keep
thinking about it now that I'm done reading it. I got my copy
from Colleen Mondor (thanks, Colleen!) at Chasing Ray, whose
opinion I trust, and she liked it a lot; Gail Gauthier, over at
Original Content, who's also pretty sharp, liked it as well. I'm
no expert on werewolf novels, or urban fantasy, and I've never
read anything by Millar before, and somehow I felt that maybe if
I had that background I'd be in on something that otherwise kept
eluding me.  So why did I keep being annoyed with it? Well, for
starters, it's a novel that does a whole lot more telling than
showing. All kinds of back story--told. All kinds of details
about the characters--told. So we hear, for example, that Kalix
(our heroine) hates her brothers, and later we even get a few
details of a fight