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When two desperate witches lure part-time journalist and full-time werewolf Elena Michaels into a carefully laid trap, she quickly learns that her perceptions about humanity are based on some fundamental flaws. In Kelley Armstrong's supernatural thriller,
Stolen, the world is populated with vampires, demons, half-demons, magical shamans and other supernatural races living anonymously among the human population--a concept that Elena has a hard time accepting, just as she struggled with her own lupine identity in Armstrong's remarkable debut,
Bitten. But when Elena returns to her werewolf pack in upstate New York, pack leader Jeremy reveals that the threat people pose to the supernatural races should not be taken lightly. When Jeremy, Elena and her lover Clay decide to take action to protect their pack, Elena gets kidnapped on the orders of a power-crazed billionaire. While being held captive she learns that while some magical beings are good and some evil, none are capable of more outright cruelty and savage betrayal than ordinary, non-magical human beings.
Armstrong actively solicited reader input via her Web site while writing the second title of her Women of the Otherworld series. This unconventional creative strategy sheds light on Armstrong's justified literary confidence. Her large cast of characters is fully realised, despite their great diversity, which ranges from insecure research scientists to unreliable half-demons, as well as Paige, an orphaned and highly volatile adolescent witch. Most gratifyingly, Armstrong's horror is tempered with a sly and very satisfying dose of humour. --Deirdre Hanna, Amazon.ca
Review
Sequel to Bitten (2001), about a girl nipped by a nasty-well, psychopathic-but handsome werewolf, Clayton Danvers, whom she takes as her lover once she turns into the only living female werewolf. In this second in the series, Elena Michaels discovers, as did Hamlet, that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, etc.-that, in fact, there are witches, half-demons, necromancers, sorcerers, shamans-and, gosh, vampires. Here, things begin with a new version of the oft-filmed The Most Dangerous Game, in which a millionaire traps humans to use them as quarry in a hunt, they being the most dangerous game. Only this time it's Tyler Winsloe, billionaire and computer geek extraordinaire, who traps "otherworld" beings and keeps them in a very advanced glass prison deep in the Maine woods. At first he has only a shaman (who escapes but is ripped apart by rottweilers as he leaves his body), two witches, and a sorcerer who works for him and guides him to prey. Winsloe's idea of great fun is to trap a werewolf, study it for a while, then free it to be hunted, although he is also privately amassing the world's greatest collection of supernaturals. Is it foregone that he'll trap, then hunt, Elena? Well, does a full moon cause Jack Nicholson to change? Elena finds herself trapped by two witches who warn her that Winsloe is onto all the otherworld races, not just werewolves; the witches then save her when Winsloe's henchmen try a kidnap. Much Darwinian classification of the varied species precedes Elena's capture and imprisonment, then all that follows. Richly done. (Kirkus Reviews)
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