I love Kelley Armstrong's Women of the Otherworld books. In the very first volume, Bitten, we meet Elena, the world's only female werewolf, and Jeremy, the current leader of the North American Pack. Both Elena and Jeremy are physically stronger than humans, with super-fast healing, severely slowed aging, and supernaturally good looks. Both of them turn into giant wolves who can eat your face. Elena, despite being the only female werewolf, is a pretty standard werewolf. Jeremy is the only non-bruiser Pack leader ever; is psychic; is rich and artistically talented and smart and his mother wasn't a werewolf at all, but a super-secret special non-werewolf supernatural and also the hottest necromancer ever loves him and and and...
Don't forget how Clay is the hardest werewolf of all the werewolves, the adopted son of the Alpha, a world reknowned anthropologist - despite not understanding people all that well, so he can be clueless to the effect his breathtakingly good looks have on a plethora of female students - has the world's only female werewolf devoted to him, and has proved to be a near-perfect father.
I agree that Armstrong writes all three characters really well, it's just that Clay adds another layer of bafflement at how Elena gets to be the Mary Sue.
Half the time, "Mary Sue" seems to mean "female character."
This, and the bar for a female character being called one seems to be creeping ever-lower.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-10-26 10:51 pm (UTC)Don't forget how Clay is the hardest werewolf of all the werewolves, the adopted son of the Alpha, a world reknowned anthropologist - despite not understanding people all that well, so he can be clueless to the effect his breathtakingly good looks have on a plethora of female students - has the world's only female werewolf devoted to him, and has proved to be a near-perfect father.
I agree that Armstrong writes all three characters really well, it's just that Clay adds another layer of bafflement at how Elena gets to be the Mary Sue.
Half the time, "Mary Sue" seems to mean "female character."
This, and the bar for a female character being called one seems to be creeping ever-lower.