Stolen (Women of the Otherworld, Book 2)
by Kelley Armstrong
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Book Summary Information
Author: Kelley ArmstrongEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-09-28
ISBN: 0452285933
Number of pages: 480
Publisher: Plume
Book Reviews of Stolen (Women of the Otherworld, Book 2)
Book Review: Boring human sex, and no wolf sex
Summary: 2 Stars
What I've got on my mind today is how sex is presented in novels featuring werewolves. Or actually, how it is NOT being portrayed in Kelly Armstrong's werewolf-based novels.
I read "Stolen" because I greatly enjoyed Armstrong's first novel, "Bitten." As much pleasure as I got from reading "Bitten," however, there was one thing that really annoyed me. The werewolf sex. Or actually, the lack of it.
Oh, there was a lot of sex in the book. But it was all HUMAN sex! Whenever Armstrong described two werewolves having making love, they were NEVER in their lupine bodies, but instead were ALWAYS in their hairless-ape costumes!
Reading about human sex can be a fun activity. But if I want to do that, there are a slew of other books I can read. I don't want to read only about humans having sex in a werewolf book. I also want to read about wolves having sex, as described from the point of view of one of the wolves!
Another very different, but also quite enjoyable, werewolf novel I recently read was "Nadya: The Wolf Chronicles" by Pat Murphy. It's also about a female werewolf. But a difference is that on the full moon Nadya turns into a perfectly normal wolf, not a super-powered uber-wolf like in most werewolf novels. And she has perfectly normal wolf instincts and desires during that time. And in her novel, Murphy very tastefully (and erotically) describes Nadya's thoughts and feelings while she, as a wolf, mates with a very sexy (to me, at least) male wolf. Sigh. Now that's the kind of writing that makes a wolf-loving woman's heart flutter. It was far too brief for my taste, but at least it was there. Sigh.
But there was NO wolf sex in either "Bitten" or "Stolen"! And there is also NO explanation of why the characters don't ever have wolf sex!
There was even a scene in "Stolen" where the main character (a female werewolf) and her partner (a male werewolf) had just run around as wolves and were really horny. So what did they do? They changed back into human form just to have sex! Why didn't they do it as wolves? Beats me!
Maybe Armstrong is very traditional minded, and she simply doesn't feel comfortable with the idea of describing wolf sex. And maybe she has such a limited imagination that she thinks that werewolves would only want to have sex as humans because she only wants to have sex with a human.
Oh, I'm not advocating the idea of humans having sex with animals. Don't get me wrong. But in a werewolf story, I do enjoy understanding life from their point of view. And sex is a part of life.
Pat Murphy understood how that type of thing could interest a reader. And she handled it tastefully.
This may sound petty, but because of this, I've lost some of my respect for Kelly Armstrong as a writer. Sex is an important part of her novels. Well, maybe not important -- I don't think the sex scenes in "Stolen" (and there were quite a few graphically described) really added anything to the story. Actually, they were distracting because they were SO BORING!!! The same two people having genital intercourse. Again and again. Even for human sex, it was REALLY BORING!!!
Sigh. Sorry to rant. But if Armstrong's not going to be creative regarding sex scenes, then I think she should just keep them out of her future stories. Yawn.
Actually, I didn't really like the rest of "Stolen". I thought the whole main plot idea was pretty mainstream and overused. "Bitten" caught my interest because it was original in many ways. But in "Stolen," Armstrong didn't expand on anything. None of the characters were further developed. Instead, she just added a lot of new supernatural characters -- vampires, witches, sorcerers and demons -- that I think the story didn't need, and which just distracted away from the whole thing I wanted to read about -- werewolves!
Murphy has several wonderfully detailed scenes (although not enough, in my opinion) describing her main character running through the woods and fields as a wolf. Armstrong did that a bit in "Bitten" -- her descriptions of a deer hunt were great. But in her second book, most of the time the main character was trapped in an indoor compound! BORING!
I'm definitely thinking about writing Armstrong a letter of complaint. But as conservative as she seems to be (based on her lack of imagination regarding sex in her stories), I figure she'll think that anybody who's interested in wolf sex is a nutcase. My hopes for her upcoming third werewolf novel are, unfortunately, no longer very high. Sigh.
Oh, well. On to my next werewolf novel -- the Tattooed Wolf, by Kim Bannerman. From what I hear, Bannerman really understands the mind of a shape shifter. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Summary of Stolen (Women of the Otherworld, Book 2)
It was in Bitten, Kelley Armstrong?s debut novel, that thirty-year-old Elena Michaels came to terms with her feral appetites and claimed the proud identity of a beautiful, successful woman?and the only living female werewolf.In Stolen, on a mission for her own elite pack, she is lured into the net of ruthless Internet billionaire Tyrone Winsloe, who has funded a bogus scientific investigation of the ?other races? and their supernatural powers. Kidnapped and studied in his underground lab deep in the Maine woods, these paranormals?witches, vampires, shamans, werewolves?are then released and hunted to the death in a real-world video game. But when Winsloe captures Elena, he finally meets his match.
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