Tldr: WERECATS EMERGENT is a great book if you like military adventure fantasy and kickass heroines coming of age, with *shapeshifting* feline humans. The author’s homepage is here: mark-engels.com
The book’s main Amazon page is here.
Look at this cover. It’s subtle but it gets the point across. I had nothing to do with this cover except be a sounding board over the last few years.
My review:
Part spy thriller, part family drama, part love letter to the Great Lakes region, WERECATS EMERGENT is a glorious furpunk *brawl* of a book.
It’s Furry fantasy meets ‘Mission Impossible’, weaving the stories of superhumans desperate to save their children from a miserable, secretive, hunted existence.
The Afflicted, accursed, and exploited feline shapeshifting Kindred are living weapons of mass destruction. They’ve been aimed at each other and humanity for centuries, on the whims of criminal and political empires who know the Kindred’s secret: either slake uncontrollable bloodlust, or face a terrible death as their bodies self-destruct.
But now, one family of humanoid werecats is on the verge of freeing themselves from slavery and curing the worst dangers of their shapeshifting curse.
Powerful forces…’good guys’ and bad…stand in the way.
I first met Pawlina, this book’s were-lynx main character, back in 2016 when Mark Engels and I were prepping for an online book query pitch event. Mark and I became critique partners.
I loved Pawly’s vividly-written energy, determination, and decency through every iteration of this book.
She’s a strawberry-blonde Hockey Girl. A confused teen sorting through her newly-triggered shapeshifting ability and all its ramifications. A sister. A daughter.
A pawn…who won’t be one for long.
In EMERGENT, Pawly’s story is just beginning. You folks are in for a wild ride…so get in, punch the accelerator, and wait for the smoke and fur to fly!
Here’s a digital painting I did of Pawly a while back (based partly on Nightcafe’s AI but heavily altered with hand-worked digital media in Painter 2023):
And yes, I *have* read large parts of the next two books, and they are primo.
I did receive a free ARC of this book, just to check the changes in this final version.
Thank you very much! So glad you enjoyed. And grateful for your unflagging support.