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ellieloredan 's review for:
Kalix: Werwölfin von London
by Martin Millar, Eva Kemper
Thank God, it's over. Finishing this was a nightmare; I made it through eventually but not without heavily exercising my eye rolling abilities. Either I fail to recognise the literary value or this book is completely mental. There are so many aspects that drove me crazy that I don’t even know where to begin. It was almost unbearable to read, especially since I knew from the very first page on that I would have issues with this novel.
How’s that even possible, you might ask. Well, I was told the hair length of Kalix, the so-called protagonist, twice on the very first page. I shuddered but generously tried to overlook this faux pas. However, my goodwill was smashed to pieces shortly afterwards when I had to learn that pointless repetition was the rhetorical device. I lost count on how often I was told a certain detail such as hair colour, degree of family relations, state of mind, (enter information of your choice) at least twice. Thankfully, repetitions seemed to be reduced in the second half, but maybe I was too apathetic to care anymore. I really dislike a writing style that assumes that I either am stupid or have no memory at all. At some point, I started wondering whether the narration was impersonating someone who isn’t all there aka drunk or stoned. All the repetitions and the restlessness of the narration that jumped randomly between the characters reminded me so much of drunken people talking.
The second aspect that bothered me was the characters. Basically, every person that has a name gets at least a few sentences of point of view narration – and I can tell you, there are a lot of names in here. This would have been ok, if they had actually had something interesting to say. However, these tertiary characters are just giving details of the plot, which was clear already. As if that weren’t enough, everyone came across one-dimensional and there was almost no character development at all. Even worse, some of their actions were totally out of character (yes, I’m looking at you, Moonglow). In the following, I’m going to give my two cents on the more important characters. This might be slightly spoilerish, so be warned.
Kalix is our bulimic, laudanum addicted, illiterate, simple-minded, unsocial werewolf outcast of a protagonist. I never came to like her; in fact, she is probably the most annoying character in the whole novel. Most of the time, she feels sorry for herself, whines and acts accordingly.
Then there is her extended family and relations that take much of the point of view spaces: her scheming mother Verasa; her drunkard wannabe rockstar cousins Beauty and Delicious (whose names I thought stupid until I found out that their real names are Butix and Delix) and their band Yum Yum Sugary Snacks; her ice-cold cousin Dominil, who ends up as the manager of the twins, favourably dubbed evil white-haired slut or vile werewolf whore (and who was one of the more interesting characters); her werewolf sorceress sister and fashion designer Thrix, who was mostly bearablebut I still don’t get why she had to start an affair with Gawain, especially since she said about a hundred times that this is stupid, etc.?! ; her oldest brother Sarapen, who wants to be the next leader and would like nothing more than to kill her, plus followers; her older brother Markus, who’s slightly nicer but wants to kill Kalix anyway, plus followers; and Gawain, the love of her life, who comes back to stir up some more chaos.
Furthermore, we have the two human students Daniel and Moonglow (her parents must be celebrities. No normal person would give a poor child such a name), who share a flat and have some romantic tension going on between them. They accidentally stumble across Kalix and decide to take her in and protect her from her big bad wolf brothers et al.
And last but certainly not least, there are the two fire elementals, the queen Malveria, Thrix’s best customer and one party of a never-ending fashion battle, and her hyper not yet adopted niece Vex. Malveria is almost as annoying as Kalix yet she and Vex are the most entertaining, but they got on my nerves after a while. They were able to cause some major chaos and the few scenes I liked had at least one of them involved.
I expected some badass werewolf clan feud with lots of scheming and fighting. In the beginning, that seemed to be the case although I didn’t like that Kalix stumbles from one attack to the next without having a storyline. And then, out of nowhere, the reader is introduced to Thrix and Malveria and their fashion drama which takes up centre stage in the novel. Naturally, there is still the scheming and bitching and hunting down of family members (favourably but not limited to Kalix) in order to blackmail votes in the election of a new leader. Naturally, there are some pointless and powerless werewolf hunters. But everyone and everything is somehow connected to Thrix and Malveria, especially since Malveria’s fight with Kabachetka is bringing the whole werewolf feud to a new level. Unfortunately, that’s fashion. Therefore, the novel reminded me of a gigantic soap opera à la Verliebt in Berlin (which is the German equivalent of Ugly Betty but with a different plot). A lot of fashion and family drama and everything takes a million detours and misunderstandings and liaisons and heartbreak – not to forget all the intrigues.
So if you are a drunken soap opera addict you’re going to love this novel. If that’s not so much the case, then I would recommend looking elsewhere for entertainment.
How’s that even possible, you might ask. Well, I was told the hair length of Kalix, the so-called protagonist, twice on the very first page. I shuddered but generously tried to overlook this faux pas. However, my goodwill was smashed to pieces shortly afterwards when I had to learn that pointless repetition was the rhetorical device. I lost count on how often I was told a certain detail such as hair colour, degree of family relations, state of mind, (enter information of your choice) at least twice. Thankfully, repetitions seemed to be reduced in the second half, but maybe I was too apathetic to care anymore. I really dislike a writing style that assumes that I either am stupid or have no memory at all. At some point, I started wondering whether the narration was impersonating someone who isn’t all there aka drunk or stoned. All the repetitions and the restlessness of the narration that jumped randomly between the characters reminded me so much of drunken people talking.
The second aspect that bothered me was the characters. Basically, every person that has a name gets at least a few sentences of point of view narration – and I can tell you, there are a lot of names in here. This would have been ok, if they had actually had something interesting to say. However, these tertiary characters are just giving details of the plot, which was clear already. As if that weren’t enough, everyone came across one-dimensional and there was almost no character development at all. Even worse, some of their actions were totally out of character (yes, I’m looking at you, Moonglow). In the following, I’m going to give my two cents on the more important characters. This might be slightly spoilerish, so be warned.
Kalix is our bulimic, laudanum addicted, illiterate, simple-minded, unsocial werewolf outcast of a protagonist. I never came to like her; in fact, she is probably the most annoying character in the whole novel. Most of the time, she feels sorry for herself, whines and acts accordingly.
Then there is her extended family and relations that take much of the point of view spaces: her scheming mother Verasa; her drunkard wannabe rockstar cousins Beauty and Delicious (whose names I thought stupid until I found out that their real names are Butix and Delix) and their band Yum Yum Sugary Snacks; her ice-cold cousin Dominil, who ends up as the manager of the twins, favourably dubbed evil white-haired slut or vile werewolf whore (and who was one of the more interesting characters); her werewolf sorceress sister and fashion designer Thrix, who was mostly bearable
Furthermore, we have the two human students Daniel and Moonglow (her parents must be celebrities. No normal person would give a poor child such a name), who share a flat and have some romantic tension going on between them. They accidentally stumble across Kalix and decide to take her in and protect her from her big bad wolf brothers et al.
And last but certainly not least, there are the two fire elementals, the queen Malveria, Thrix’s best customer and one party of a never-ending fashion battle, and her hyper not yet adopted niece Vex. Malveria is almost as annoying as Kalix yet she and Vex are the most entertaining, but they got on my nerves after a while. They were able to cause some major chaos and the few scenes I liked had at least one of them involved.
I expected some badass werewolf clan feud with lots of scheming and fighting. In the beginning, that seemed to be the case although I didn’t like that Kalix stumbles from one attack to the next without having a storyline. And then, out of nowhere, the reader is introduced to Thrix and Malveria and their fashion drama which takes up centre stage in the novel. Naturally, there is still the scheming and bitching and hunting down of family members (favourably but not limited to Kalix) in order to blackmail votes in the election of a new leader. Naturally, there are some pointless and powerless werewolf hunters. But everyone and everything is somehow connected to Thrix and Malveria, especially since Malveria’s fight with Kabachetka is bringing the whole werewolf feud to a new level. Unfortunately, that’s fashion. Therefore, the novel reminded me of a gigantic soap opera à la Verliebt in Berlin (which is the German equivalent of Ugly Betty but with a different plot). A lot of fashion and family drama and everything takes a million detours and misunderstandings and liaisons and heartbreak – not to forget all the intrigues.
So if you are a drunken soap opera addict you’re going to love this novel. If that’s not so much the case, then I would recommend looking elsewhere for entertainment.