Friday, August 7, 2009

Stolen - Kelley Armstrong


****
Genre : Fantasy

Series : Women of the Otherworld

French title : Capture

American publisher : Plume Books : 7.99$US

Canadian publisher : Seal Books : 10.99$CAN

English publisher : Orbit : 7.99£

In Bitten, 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.

What I think

In this second book of Women of the Otherworld series, Elena Michaels, the only female werewolf, is back. She's a young, modern, and independent woman, who has a strong character and who's in love.
Here Elena puts herself in a perilous situation. She's imprisoned by a rich collectionneur, who only finds his plesure in hunting.
In the begining, I laughed a little because we could almost believe it is a kind of "freak circus".

In Bitten, the story of the werewolves is realistic, we believ it, why not? But here we meet other kinds of preternatural characters : vampires, witches, half-demons, shamans...It's funny how it could be easy to believe in the existence of only one of those, each taken separately, but when you put them all together in one book, it makes things less believable. On the contrary we should say, well if werewolves exist, it's only logical that witches and vampires too!

But I think the "Freak circus" effect comes from the kind of congress Elena and Jeremy attend to, where each of the families have a seat, if I can say so. It's a bit too much! Well fortunately, it's a bit too much for Elena too;o)

But, Stolen is a really gripping book with a lot of action and multifacetted characters, especially Elena, who under her airs of strong and independent woman is in reality very fragile and afraid of abandonment, just as anyone else. Werewolf or not, a woman is a woman;o)

Another character I really like is Jeremy, the Alpha, the father figure of the series. He is a so charming man and at the same time so enigmatic, unlike Clay who doesn't beat about the bush, very pushy, animal. He acknowledges it too, he feels more like a wolf than a man. And I must confess, he's so hot...

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