Wounded by Amy Lane
(iUniverse / 0-595-37914-1 / January 2006 / 362 pages / $20.95)
Subtitled The Second Book in The Little Goddess Series, Amy Lane's Wounded continues the saga of Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick and her merry band of elves, vampires, and what-nots. Cory's giant elf boyfriend sent her off to college in San Francisco at the conclusion of the first book, Vulnerable, and most of the action in Wounded takes place in that liberated city. It's a good thing it does, too, because the book kickstarts off with a homoerotic scene between an elf and a vampire, and then proceeds to go where no small-minded human would dare. The action quickly mellows into a smoother, more introspective work than the more jarring first book. Wounded is primarily a story of love, relationships, and Cory's recovery from the loss of her vampire lover, Adrian, in Vulnerable. Ms. Lane constructs the storyline in a manner that trades a little of the spunkiness of Cory as she enters the supernatural underworld in Vulnerable for a dose of a wizened Cory who has fully accepted her unusual new lifestyle. Fans of Amy Lane's innovative Little Goddess series should be quite pleased with the result.
All is not roses in Goddessland, however. For a perfectionist like me, the meticulous reading of Wounded developed into quite a chore. For some reason that is a mystery to me, Amy overused ellipses throughout the book, particularly within the dialog, to a point that goes far beyond a distraction. If all the punctuation near these numerous ellipses, as well as the punctuation in general, had approached a flawless level, I could ignore the problem, at least to some degree. There is hardly a mistake in Wounded that could not have been caught through repetitive proofreading, but obviously the book's title is all too apt for its own good. Amy, please, next time leave the great majority of the ellipses on the cutting room floor and don't be so paranoid of commas. They are just little marks that help convey your story accurately to your readers. The snakes on the plane are ellipses, not commas!
As I stated in my reviews of her first book, Amy Lane is a very entertaining writer. She has enough spunky imagination to give some of it away to the many needy, boring authors out there, and still have enough left over to hold her Queen of Spunk title! If you like the way Anne Rice opened up the depth of realities and emotions for vampire tales back in '76, you may like The Little Goddess Series, because Amy's work does much the same thing. You quickly come to like the characters, even though polite society would call them dangerous, perverted monsters, and Miss Stephanie would say, Eeewwwww! There is a certain element of erotic fantasy for those girls who were never cheerleaders, too. In fact, I could say that this is probably the reason why Amy's books have outsold all of my own, to say the least. Stockard Channing starred in a little-known television movie in 1973 entitled The Girl Most Likely to... that effectively mined the same emotions. A homely girl has plastic surgery and the swan murders all the guys who had mistreated the ugly duckling. When a little-noticed goth chick with relatively low self esteem meets a vampire and a giant elf who show her the joys of becoming a sex goddess, Cory Kirkpatrick turns into the swan. This is essentially the basis of Amy's stories, and I can see how young women lap it all up like kittens. More power to 'em....
See Also: Tabitha's B&N Review (not yet posted)
Subtitled The Second Book in The Little Goddess Series, Amy Lane's Wounded continues the saga of Corinne Carol-Anne Kirkpatrick and her merry band of elves, vampires, and what-nots. Cory's giant elf boyfriend sent her off to college in San Francisco at the conclusion of the first book, Vulnerable, and most of the action in Wounded takes place in that liberated city. It's a good thing it does, too, because the book kickstarts off with a homoerotic scene between an elf and a vampire, and then proceeds to go where no small-minded human would dare. The action quickly mellows into a smoother, more introspective work than the more jarring first book. Wounded is primarily a story of love, relationships, and Cory's recovery from the loss of her vampire lover, Adrian, in Vulnerable. Ms. Lane constructs the storyline in a manner that trades a little of the spunkiness of Cory as she enters the supernatural underworld in Vulnerable for a dose of a wizened Cory who has fully accepted her unusual new lifestyle. Fans of Amy Lane's innovative Little Goddess series should be quite pleased with the result.
All is not roses in Goddessland, however. For a perfectionist like me, the meticulous reading of Wounded developed into quite a chore. For some reason that is a mystery to me, Amy overused ellipses throughout the book, particularly within the dialog, to a point that goes far beyond a distraction. If all the punctuation near these numerous ellipses, as well as the punctuation in general, had approached a flawless level, I could ignore the problem, at least to some degree. There is hardly a mistake in Wounded that could not have been caught through repetitive proofreading, but obviously the book's title is all too apt for its own good. Amy, please, next time leave the great majority of the ellipses on the cutting room floor and don't be so paranoid of commas. They are just little marks that help convey your story accurately to your readers. The snakes on the plane are ellipses, not commas!
As I stated in my reviews of her first book, Amy Lane is a very entertaining writer. She has enough spunky imagination to give some of it away to the many needy, boring authors out there, and still have enough left over to hold her Queen of Spunk title! If you like the way Anne Rice opened up the depth of realities and emotions for vampire tales back in '76, you may like The Little Goddess Series, because Amy's work does much the same thing. You quickly come to like the characters, even though polite society would call them dangerous, perverted monsters, and Miss Stephanie would say, Eeewwwww! There is a certain element of erotic fantasy for those girls who were never cheerleaders, too. In fact, I could say that this is probably the reason why Amy's books have outsold all of my own, to say the least. Stockard Channing starred in a little-known television movie in 1973 entitled The Girl Most Likely to... that effectively mined the same emotions. A homely girl has plastic surgery and the swan murders all the guys who had mistreated the ugly duckling. When a little-noticed goth chick with relatively low self esteem meets a vampire and a giant elf who show her the joys of becoming a sex goddess, Cory Kirkpatrick turns into the swan. This is essentially the basis of Amy's stories, and I can see how young women lap it all up like kittens. More power to 'em....
See Also: Tabitha's B&N Review (not yet posted)
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