Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Book 4: Lila the Werewolf

Lila The Werewolf by Peter S. Beagle is a perfect example as to why I love werewolf stories and fantasy in general.  I had really high expectations for this book and I’m glad to say this book surpassed those expectations.

I first heard about Lila the Werewolf thanks to Carrie Vaughn’s blog. She shared her favorite werewolf stories/novels back in September. Within minutes of reading that blog, I went to amazon,  added the book to the wish list and gave the book highest priority.

It’s not just Carrie Vaughn recommended the book, I happen to adore Peter S. Beagle. He’s been a very sentimental author in my book for years. Peter S. Beagle is best known for The Last Unicorn. This was my favorite movie when I was a wee little thing. Because I adored the movie, it was my first adult fantasy book that I ever read.  Over the years, I’ve collected a couple of his books and I’m always looking to see if a book store carries any other of his books besides The Last Unicorn.  Plus I was even more endeared to him after meeting him and listening to the commentary of The Last Unicorn at Otakon a few years back.  He has this amazing story telling  that just captures my interest and it’s always character driven but usually in an unexpected way.

So needless to say, I expected great things.  I’m glad to say that it for the most part it met all of them and exceeded them.

The only downfall to this book is that I wasn’t expecting it to be a short book. It’s only 43 pages long. So it made for a skinny little Christmas gift under the tree this year.  Neither of us (my mom and I) really expected it to be such a thin book.  In all honesty after reading it, I thought the length was perfect for the story itself. It gave the reader enough meat to really gnaw on but at the same time didn’t leave you wanting more. It just was that perfect balance.

This book is character driven. It’s from Farrell’s point of view about how he started to date Lila and quickly discovered that she was a werewolf. It’s a funny little tale about how he dealt with it all and how he knew he had to end the relationship sooner or later.

I loved Lila. She’s a werewolf. It’s just uncommon to see a female werewolf. Plus I liked how she was a werewolf more from heredity then from being attacked. It’s something that is a bit on the rare side.

One of the things I wasn’t expecting was the names Ben and Farrell together in the story. This is important to me since Ben Farrell is one of the main characters from the Kitty Norville series (the Carrie Vaughn series I adore).  It shows me how she pulled from this story not just in the idea of a female werewolf but in subtle ways that could just be coincidental.

I adore this little story. It’s a quick read but I found it rich and fun.

*Sorry that this is a little bit more of an obvious link up to Amazon, for whatever reason, I couldn't just access only an image.

No comments:

Post a Comment