Author: J. D. Tyler (aka Jo Davis, Jo Carlisle)
Series: ALPHA PACK
Plot Type: SMR
Ratings: V4; S4½; H2
Publisher and Titles: Signet Eclipse
Primal Law (4/2011)
"Black Magic" (e-novella, 3/2012)
Savage Awakening (4/2012)
Black Moon (12/2012)
Hunter's Heart (9/2013)
Book 5 (Title TBA, Winter 2013)
This post was revised and updated on 1/22/13 to include a review of the third novel in the series, Black Moon. That review appears first, followed by an overview of the world-building and reviews of the first two novels and the e-novella:
BOOK 3: Black Moon
As the story opens, Mac learns that she is pregnant with Kalen's child, but she doesn't tell him. (Why do so many of these silly paranormal romance heroines keep such important secrets when doing so invariably causes a huge amount of trouble?) In the meantime, Malik is steadily increasing his control over Kalen, and Kalen isn't sure that he can continue to resist Malik's seductive persuasion techniques.
The story follows the truly rocky romantic road that Mac and Kalen stumble down, accompanied by pages and pages of angst-filled interior monologues and anguished dialogues. The action part of the story is directly connected to the Kalen-Malik relationship as Malik sets up a dangerous situation in which he expects Kalen to do his will and turn on his fellow Alpha Pack members. What will Kalen do? (As if we all don't know the answer to that question.)
This is one of the weaker books in the series with a whiny hero and a shallow and thoughtless heroine. Each one is so self-absorbed that neither really tunes in to the other's emotions. Time and time again, words and actions by one are misunderstood in the most negative manner by the other. By the halfway point in the book, I was praying that someone would forcibly lock the two of them in a room with a couples' therapist.
The next book will tell Ryon Hunter's story. Ryon is a telepath who can also communicate with the dead. He falls for Daria Bradford, a Native American seer. Daria makes her living as a wildlife conservationist, and she just happens to be studying a wolf pack in the Shoshone National Forest. Gee, I wonder what happens next?
WORLD-BUILDING
This is a world inhabited by shape shifters, witches, demons, and vampires, all of whom coexist with humans but keep their true identities hidden. The stars of the series—the Alpha Pack—are all shifters, some born and some made. The made shifters were originally human Navy SEALS with various psychic talents who were attacked by rogue werewolves five years ago. Half of their unit were slaughtered, and the survivors became werewolves themselves. All but one made the shift in good shape, and they teamed up with some born werewolves to fight against various types of evil. Pack headquarters is on government land in the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming, where they have a huge compound that includes living quarters; medical, laboratory, and training facilities; and acres of wild terrain for midnight roaming.
Book 1 sets up the series story arc as the Pack discovers the existence of NewLife Technology, a huge corporation that, publicly, does research on diseases like AIDS. Secretly, however, NewLife has an underground laboratory that is experimenting with gene splicing using captured shifters as subjects. Their goal is to create an army of super-soldiers. The company's scientists are "taking existing shifters and fit humans, enhancing their greatest and deadliest genetic strengths, and striving to perfect the process of making an intelligent man-beast that has Psy gifts and is virtually indestructible." (p. 280)
This is one of the classic (and overused) mythologies of paranormal fiction, so there's not much that is fresh or inventive here, except for a twist that has been added to the soul-mate situation. If one of these shifters finds his true mate (aka Bondmate), he must complete the mating process by biting her on the neck or he will gradually weaken and die. Here, one of the Pack's doctors summarizes the situation for a shifter in the early stages of mating: "You're already symptomatic, with the sore throat and fever, which seems to accompany the start of the mating urge. The longer you put off biting your female, taking her as your Bondmate, the sicker you'll become. Of course, if you do bite her, then there's a possibility she'll turn into a shifter as well." (Savage Awakening, p. 145) This tricky mating process, of course, puts a strain on the shifter's relationship with his romantic partner, who usually finds herself in a position in which she either agrees to the mating or watches her boyfriend waste away. This "mate or die" rule is at the root of the lengthy, angst-filled interior monologues of both the shifter hero and the human (usually) heroine.
All in all, I'd say that this is a middle-of-the-road shifter romance series with the usual alpha males running around back-slapping and knuckle-bumping each other and growling if someone touches their mates. Click HERE to go to a page on the author's web site with brief biographies of the members of the Alpha Pack. Each entry describes the person's inner animal (if he or she is a shifter), Psy skill, and history with the team.
All in all, I'd say that this is a middle-of-the-road shifter romance series with the usual alpha males running around back-slapping and knuckle-bumping each other and growling if someone touches their mates. Click HERE to go to a page on the author's web site with brief biographies of the members of the Alpha Pack. Each entry describes the person's inner animal (if he or she is a shifter), Psy skill, and history with the team.
BOOK 1: Primal Law
The hero of book 1 is Jaxon (Jax) Law, one of the original Navy SEALS who became werewolves. Jax lives with both emotional and physical scars incurred as a result of an ambush seven months ago in which several of the Pack died. The team was betrayed by Beryl, a witch who was Jax's lover at the time, and Jax holds himself responsible for being deceived so easily. Jax was severely wounded in that fight, winding up with a badly scarred and poorly healed leg that slows him down in his human form. This is one of the weak points in the mythology. All of Jax's other injuries heal up immediately, and the leg injury doesn't bother him at all when he's in wolf form. But when he's in human form, he's in constant pain and he limps. Why didn't his leg heal? Who knows? Jax feels particularly guilty about his part in the ambush, not only because he trusted the deceitful woman, but also because he was injured so badly that he couldn't use his Psy skill of time-bending—making time replay itself for a few minutes—to change the outcome of the ambush and save his buddies' lives.
One night, Jax and his Pack buddies head to Las Vegas for some R&R (i.e., drinking gambling, and sex) when Jax hears a scream and heads off to find a lovely young woman being man-handled by two thugs. Kira Locke is a lab assistant for NewLife, and she has just gotten caught stealing some lab specimens because she is suspicious about what's going on in the underground lab. Jax shifts into wolf form and rescues Kira, but because she has seen him shift, Jax and his teammates take her back to their home base. The plot follows the Pack as they investigate the NewLife facility. Eventually, they learn NewLife's big evil secret, and they also discover that at least one of their men who was believed dead in the ambush has been a prisoner in the NewLife labs—one of the experimental subjects. Add all this to the fact that buried bodies of shifters have been turning up on the outskirts of a near-by town—all showing evidence of tissue samples being cut from them and all being full of suspicious drugs that are similar to those in Kira's stolen samples. The Pack members connect the dots and realize that NewLife is at the heart of a very bad situation.
The heroine is this book is a stereotypically beautiful, feisty woman whose inquisitiveness causes her to gravitate toward TSTL moments. The main plot is well written, with all of the story threads neatly woven into the resolution. The problem for me is in the details. For example, on Kira's first morning at the Pack complex, she is left alone to roam about freely. Doors to critical areas have no locks, so she even wanders into the area in which they keep dangerous supernaturals in locked cages. This is supposed to be a top-secret government facility, so the lack of security definitely does not ring true. In another example, the Pack leader assigns Kira to work with potentially dangerous supernaturals who are being held in captivity because they show promise for rehabilitation. Within minutes of walking into the cage of a hostile fairy who has been caged for months without speaking a word or even responding to anyone, Kira has him talking, smiling, and promising to be good. Her Pack escorts even allow Kira to let the fairy have immediate free access to the entire facility. Again, this is totally illogical, both from a security angle and from a get-real standpoint. The Pack's medical staff, including a psychologist, have been trying to get this guy to respond for months, and Kira does it in a minute flat. I don't think so. Still, if you love shifter romances, you'll probably like this one if you can overlook the illogical parts of the story.
E-NOVELLA: Black Magic
This novella begins the love story of Kalen Black, sorcerer and necromancer, and Dr. Mackenzie (Mac) Grant, the Pack's parapsychologist. When the two are in a near-by town they are set upon by one of the same monsters that ambushed the team seven months ago. Despite escaping with their lives, both are injured by the creature, who scratches Mac and bites Kalen. Soon thereafter, Mac begins hearing evil voices in her mind. To save her from going to the dark side, Kalen gives her his pentacle pendant, thereby rescuing Mac but putting himself in danger. As soon as he removes the pendant, the evil voice gets inside Kalen's head, ordering him to do bad things and promising dark power. Book 2 tells more about the source of the evil voice, and book 3 tells the full story of Kalen and Mac's trials and tribulations and eventual mating.
BOOK 2: Savage Awakening
The action in book 2 picks up several weeks after the big climax of the previous book in which Aric was kidnapped. Since then, Aric has been tortured mercilessly by Beryl, the evil witch who betrayed the Pack and caused them to be ambushed by the Sluagh (bat-winged, fangy monsters) seven months ago. As it turns out, Beryl is Aric's step-sister, but he has never revealed that relationship to his Pack buddies. The plot continues the series story arc as the team attacks the facility in which Aric is imprisoned and rescues him along with several others. One of the others is Micah Chase, one of the original Navy SEALS. Micah was presumed dead in the ambush, but in reality he has been imprisoned and tortured all during that time by the NewLife "scientists."
Micah's sister, Rowan, is a Los Angeles police officer who believes that her brother is dead until she gets a tip that he might be alive and that she can find more information at a mysterious compound in the Shoshone National Forest. When she arrives at the Alpha Pack headquarters and learns the full story about what's going on there, she decides to stay on until the Pack finds her brother. Rowan is no shrinking violet; she's a tough, streetwise cop. So...when the Pack jumps into helicopters and heads off to rescue Micah and Aric, Rowan stows away with the help of a cloaking spell from Sariel, the fairy prince. When Aric and Rowan first see one another (in the depths of the filthy cages in which Aric and Micah are being held), their inner fireworks go off immediately. Aric realizes early on that Rowan is his Bondmate, but he feels so much guilt about not having confessed his relationship to Beryl that he feels that he is not worthy of Rowan. He refuses to explain the mating situation to Rowan and gets weaker and weaker by the day. Once again—just as in the previous book—the hero fades away nearly to the point of death before the heroine shoves her neck under his teeth and saves his life. (I believe that this is one of the most depressing mating processes in the entirety of paranormal romance fiction.)
In this book we get a flashback and full replay of the werewolf attack six years ago in Afghanistan that resulted in the team members becoming werewolves. We also learn exactly what those monsters were who ambushed the team and attacked Kalen and Mac. They are called the Sluagh, and Sariel describes them as "what happens when a member of the Seelie court turns to evil." (p. 167) Sariel explains that "the Sluagh "are little more than drones who exist to cause mayhem. This makes them very popular for members of the born Unseelie court to...send out and do their terrible bidding." (pp. 167-168) As the team members put the clues together, they realize that Sariel's villainous Unseelie father, Malik, is the real power behind the NewLife gene splicing program.
Once again, there are some illogical moments during the story, mostly related to the mating process, of which by now, all of the Pack members are well aware. At one point, Aric is prevented by his friends from committing suicide during a particularly despondent moment, and he announces to all of them that it doesn't matter that they saved him, that he's going to die anyhow because he's found his mate, and he refuses to mate with her. Then, he makes them all swear that they won't tell Rowan that he is going to die if they don't mate. Would you believe that not one of Aric's BFFs breaks the no-tell pledge—even though he's going to DIE? It is totally unbelievable that his close friends would behave like that. But, of course, if someone told Rowan the truth then we wouldn't have Rowan's melodramatic life-death race to Aric's side in the exciting conclusion.
As the book ends, Malik's evil voice is growing stronger in Kalen's head and he takes his first dark, Malik-directed action. In book 3, we'll see how Kalen fares with Malik, and we'll get the rest of his love story with Mac.
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