Welcome to the Wild Hunt

There are so many books about different kinds of shapeshifters that it takes something special to make as series stand out.  TS Joyce's books, for example, stand out because there's a freaking dragon for goodness sake (also they are quick and fun reads for me).  But Cherise Sinclair's Wild Hunt series is and will always be one of my absolute favorites.  I first came across Ms. Sinclair in college when I found her Masters of the Shadowlands series, which is BDSM, but the story takes precedent over the trapping.  It's a great series.  So after I read the first few Shadowlands books, I went looking to see what else she had written and I found Winter of the Wolf, which is actually the second book in the Wild Hunt series.  Silly me, it took a few months to realize that there was a first book.  I was doing finals, okay?

Anyway, so the first book is actually Hour of the Lion.  Vicky Morgan is a Marine who is off on medical leave when she ends up kidnapped and has to escape.  While escaping, she rescues a boy named Lachlan, who has one specific ability that weirds Vicky out a bit.  He can change into a mountain lion.  Despite this, it's not in Vicky's nature not to help.  Lachlan performs a strange ritual as he is dying and begs Vicky to go to the town of Cold Creek and find his grandfather.  Vicky is concerned that there are more shapeshifters out there and want to insure that they are not a danger to Americans so she goes to the town, but keeps who she is a secret.  After staying in town for a few weeks, she starts to see things.  Creatures in bushes, a salamander in the fire, men that no one else can see at the one pub in town, the Wild Hunt.  But she also attracts the attention of Alec and Callum McGregor, the sheriff and owner of the pub respectively.  She also connects to Callum's thirteen year old daughter, Jamie.  When Jamie is attacked and escapes, Vicky finds out just what that strange ritual did.  Now she can turn into a mountain lion too.

Through Vicky, we are introduced to the Daonain, a culture of men and women who can shift into mountain lions, wolves, and bears due to gifts from the Fae's Wild Hunt centuries before.  It is a complex world with laws, governance, and beauty.  Vicky is a bit shell-shocked, but learns she is now part of that world, for better or for worse.  She does fight it a bit.  She is all up in arms when she learns that she must attend, for example, a Gather, when all members of the community, and maybe some from other communities who have traveled, come together on the night of the full moon and women go into heat to breed with as many men as possible.  Vicky is not okay with that.  She's a little put off at first when she learns that, because there are more men than women in the society, women often lifemate with more than one man, usually blood brothers.  She gets over that one because she's falling for Callum and Alec, and they are falling for her.  She learns about the leader of the community, the cosantir, and his universal power over all the Daonain in his territory--or as he's better know by, Callum.  Also cahirs, the dedicated warriors.

However, the question still looms:  Who was trapping Daonain?  Who tried to kidnap Jamie?  Don't worry. You find out.  But it might be a bit bloody!

Like I said earlier, Winter of the Wolf is the second book in the series, but the first that I read.  Bree was orphaned as a toddler and has grown up in Seattle.  She's an amazing chef and dessert maker who lives with a former foster sister, Ashley, and Bree does not like change at all.  One night, a strange creature breaks into their apartment and kills Ashley.  It turns to Bree and says there's something odd about her blood and proceeds to rape her.  Bree is completely traumatized by this whole event, having witnessed and suffered through it all.

After being released from the hospital, she clings to the two things she has from her childhood:  A sliver bracelet and a picture of her and her parents in front of the Wild Hunt pub.  So she heads off to Cold Creek to try and find her parents.  On arriving there, she finds shelter at the Wildwood Lodge, a set of cabins managed by Shay and Zeb, two very scary cahirs who have come to Cold Creek to teach other cahirs how to kill hellhounds.  Shay and Zeb both see that she is hurt, and are drawn to her.  They try and protect her as much as they can while stealing the occasional kiss.

Events occur which show that Bree is Daonain herself.  It is theorized that the metal of the city in combination with birth control pills have kept her magic side dormant, but it's killing her.  So Callum, as cosantir, forces her change and names Zeb and Shay as her mentors, to grab her by the scruff of the neck and drag her into shifterdom.  If you hadn't guessed, Bree's a wolf.  She has trouble with the local pack, but learns to fight back.  All she wants to do is go back to Seattle, although that desire changes.  Shay and Zeb, however, want Bree, but Shay is oathbound and cannot lifemate.  He and Zeb are partners.  So what to do about the girl they're falling in love with?

A few months later, Bree receives a letter from a former neighbor that something has been coming in and killing her neighbors.  Bree can now give that creature a name:  Hellhound.  She is determined to go back and kill in herself, despite the orders she has to stay in Cold Creek.  When she runs and Shay and Zeb follow to where their magic has no power, who will come out on the other side?

In the first two books, we have main characters who know nothing about the Daonain and have to be Eventide of the Bear is a bit different.  Emma is Daonain and has been her whole life.  Although her mother neglected to teach her a few things.  She was, however, trained as a bard, the one who teaches the history of the Daonain.  At her first Gather, tragedy struck and she was banished to the wilderness.  Three years later, on the dark of the moon, she gets injured saving a human family from a hellhound.  With a broken leg that isn't healing, she shifts to find food at campsites, leaving behind stories of a very clever bear that reach Callum's ears.  As it's his territory, he grabs Ben, a big old grizzly shifter, and they go off to trap a bear.  Emma tries hard to get away, believing she is banished, but Ben and Callum take her home and get her healed up.
taught.  It's a great introduction to the society, and to the different elements of the culture. 

The day after Ben gets Emma settled in his house to heal, Ben's brother Ryder shows up with his four year old daughter Minette in tow.  Minette has been abused by her mother, and Ryder doesn't know what else to do but go home and mend fences with his brother to raise his cub.  Ryder doesn't trust women, and Emma is no exception, but he can't help being charmed by Emma's sweetness and her patience and caring towards Minette.  However, among the Daonain, children--cubs--are only raised away from their mother if their mother dies, and Ryder has just taken Minette from her mother, Genevive.  When Genevive shows up in town, not to get Minette back but to try and get money, it's going to be an all out fight to keep the cub where she's safe.  That fight is complicated when hellhounds return to Cold Creek.

The most recent book in the series, Leap of the Lion, just came out yesterday!  I was very excited because I love this town and the characters.  I wasn't as thrilled with this book as I expected to be though.  That's not saying I didn't like it, but Owen, one of the main characters, felt like he basically had the same hangups as Ryder from the book before.  His reasoning was different, but it just felt too similar.  I still enjoyed the book though.  This book focuses on Darcy, a shifter who was kidnapped and imprisoned with the rest of her town when she was a young girl.  The women are kept imprisoned, and they are dying slowly.  None of them have shifted.  The men have been turned into super-soldiers with their sisters being the thing that keeps them controlled.  The Daonain, unlike humans, have incredibly close sibling bonds and losing a sibling involuntary is difficult.  Doing something to get their sibling killed is something that no Daonain would do.  Darcy manages to escape the compound, and on the night of her escape, she shifts for the first time.  Stuck in a park in Seattle, shifted and unable to change back, and wounded, the Scythe--who had kidnapped Darcy--are closing in.  However, the lone shifter in the city, Tynan, calls the Cosantir Callum.  Callum sends Owen into town to help find what could be a rouge shifter.

Owen doesn't like women.  Going to find the rouge is his punishment for being mean to the young shifters in Cold Creek.  New to town is his brother, Gawain, who is a special kind of shifter himself.  Owen heads into Seattle and meets with Tynan and the pair of them are able to rescue Darcy.  She's taken back to Cold Creek where she tells her story.  Callum promises to help find the women's prison, and the men's barracks and rescue the survivors of the entire town.   He names Owen and Gawain as Darcy's mentors, to teach her the customs of the Daonain and how to shift.  A bit about Gawain:  Daonain culture has its specific God-given talents.  Herne the Hunter gifts Cosantirs, like Callum, and cahirs, like Owen.  The Mother gifts healers, like Donal, who we've seen in the books before, and the blademages, Daonain who are gifted with metals (unlike the rest of the culture) and can create enchanted blades and bracelets for lifemates.  Gawain is a blademage.

In Leap of the Lion, we learn more about the pair who will star in the next Wild Hunt book, healer Donal and his littermate Tynan, who is coming home.  We don't know who they're going to be paired with.  Also, we get to see the birth of Vicki's cubs!  I'm totally leaving that one a surprise.  It's great.  From her website, we know that Ms. Sinclair will likely write more Wild Hunt books, but when depends on when the stories come to her.  Next, however, will be a Club Shadowlands book in 2018.