Review: WERECATS CONVERGENT by Mark J. Engels

WERECATS CONVERGENT, the second novel in Mark J. Engels’ The Forest Exiles Saga, starts off with a bang and doesn’t let up for a single page.

Honestly, look at this cover! (I had nothing to do with making it, I just love it and how close it comes to the feel of this book.)

Tormented by grief and guilt over her bloodlust rampages, were-lynx Pawly has fled from her family, her unsuspecting human lover, and her Navy career. Training her killing skills and self-control, Pawly hunts human traffickers across urban wilds.

Some people wont let her run away:

The family who loves her.

The lover who can’t forget her.

The enemies who need her blood to cure theirs.

Werecats are hunted by some humans, enslaved by others. Existing in hiding among humans or in wild isolation, the feline-humanoid Kindred are living weapons of mass destruction. The onset of Affliction and its murderous shapeshifted rages almost always means death: to human victims or to the werecat who abstains from violence and sickens from that unfulfilled backlash.

Pawly’s family of werecats is on the verge of freeing their entire subspecies from the cycle of uncontrollable bloodlust and self-destruction, via a technological advancement that takes their ‘curse’ from a mythological Affliction to a real…and curable…condition.

Their goals converge with their North Korean werecat enemy’s plan to usurp this technology, the interest of US government covert programs, and the hopes of a dwindling Kindred werecat group in their ancestral homeland in eastern Poland’s ancient forests.

To add to the weight on Pawly’s shoulders, a young relative becomes the latest Afflicted target of their enemies.

WERECATS CONVERGENT blends intricate plotlines and action sequences for a fast-moving and explosive sequel. Various and vividly-drawn settings (San Francisco back-alleys, Washington DC industrial parks, Chicago suburbs, and Poland’s snowy forests and crowded harbors) are crucial parts of plot and even character development.

With Forest Exiles, Engels has added to the intriguing subgenre of Paranormal Military thriller, with fun characters and plausibly-relatable plots. If you’re a fan of Paranormal Fantasy and/or Furry Fantasy, but want to try something different, this series could be one of your new favorites!

Warning: this book ends on a cliffhanger! Readers won’t have to wait long* for the stunning conclusion to this part of Pawly’s story.

(A previous version of this book was published under the title ALWAYS GRAY IN WINTER, but this is a rewritten and stronger version.)

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* I’m one of Mark’s beta readers, so I already know most of the story-to-come. Here’s a sneak peek of a version of Pawly, via a Nightcafe AI generator and my own digital handpainting via Painter 22.