The Silver Wolf
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4.5 • 42 Ratings
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- $3.99
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
In this new historical romantic fantasy of stunning originality and scope, Alice Borchardt breathes life into a bygone age, brilliantly recreating a sensuous, violent world--and the men and women whose grand ambitions, betrayals, and passions shape the era in which they live and die.
Decadent Rome at the dawn of the Dark Ages is mired in crumbling grandeur. Now, into the Eternal City comes Regeane, a beautiful young woman distantly related, through her dead mother, to Charlemagne. Regeane's regal blood renders her an unwilling pawn in the struggle for political power. But unknown to those plotting against her, the blood she has inherited from her murdered father makes her much more than a child of royalty. Possessed of preternatural agility and strength, primal memories extending back thousands of years, and senses so keen they can pierce the veil of death itself, Regeane is a shapeshifter: woman and wolf, hunter and hunted.
Betrothed by Charlemagne's command to a barbarian lord she has never seen, Regeane is surrounded by enemies. The most notorious, her depraved uncle and guardian, will not scruple to betray her to the Church unless she aids him in his sinister schemes. And if the Church discovers her secret, Regeane will burn at the stake. Yet Regeane finds allies as well: Lucilla, rumored to be the private courtesan of Pope Hadrian himself; Antonius, a wise and gentle soul trapped within a body grotesquely disfigured by disease; and the little Saxon girl Elfgifa, brave beyond her years, with a tongue as sharp as a blade.
Outside the gates of Rome, baying on the moonlit expanses of the Campagna, there is a mysterious dark wolf whose scent makes the animal in Regeane tremble with desire. Now, as an infamous stranger prepares to claim his bride, deadly plots and counter plots tighten like a noose around her neck, Regeane must fight to live with dignity as the proud creature she is: civilized and savage, woman and wolf, partaking of both yet infinitely more than either . . .
Lyrical, fast-paced, sensual, and rich with historical detail and deep insights into the heart, The Silver Wolf catapults Alice Borchardt squarely into the front rank of contemporary women writers. Her intricate plot and hypnotic voice will cast a spell that few will be able to resist.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Borchardt spices her usual recipe for breathy historical romance (Devoted, etc.) with a generous pinch of the supernatural. Regeane is a secretive shapeshifter living in Rome at the end of the Empire's decline. Distantly related to Charlemagne, she becomes a pawn between the French and Italy's scrappy Lombards when she is betrothed to Maeniel, guardian of a passage through the Alps who is sympathetic to the French king. Intrigues and counterplots abound as Maeniel speeds his way to retrieve his reluctant bride and Regeane lends her supernatural powers to curing the leprous Antonius, whom the Lombards hope to use to discredit his father, Pope Hadrian, and turn the Roman citizens against Charlemagne's advancing Catholic army. In Regeane, whose woman and wolf selves often spar contentiously with one another, Borchardt finds the perfect metaphor for the once opulent Roman civilization, now hostage to its bestial appetites. She elaborates the decadent excesses of the time with gleefully vivid descriptions of gluttonous banquets, grotesque leper colonies and violent lusts sated both on the battlefield and in the bridal bed. Readers who like their fantasy dusted with gritty realism and who can forgive anachronistic modern dialogue in a period melodrama will find themselves indulged with more than a few twists to this werewolf tale. FYI: The galley to Silver Wolf carries a note to "Dear Reader" from Borchardt's sister, Anne Rice, stating that "it is with immense joy that I introduce to you a daring and vibrant new voice on the female literary frontier"--although the novel is Borchardt's third.
Customer Reviews
Vivid
Awsome and vivid book that attends to the imagination.