Gentleman Takes a Chance

Shifter Series 2

By: Sarah A. Hoyt

Narrated by: Kim Niemi

Shapeshift into adventure!

Shapeshifters Kyrie and Tom try to live a normal life in a small Colorado town - normal, that is, considering one of them is secretly a panther and the other a dragon. But now a primeval Shifter feud grows infinitely more deadly, and Kyrie and Tom find themselves warriors in an ancient struggle for Shifter destiny itself!

Quick-witted fantasy doyenne Sarah Hoyt continues the brilliant contemporary fantasy Shifter saga begun in Draw One in the Dark.

©2008 Sarah A. Hoyt (P)2020 Tantor

Shifters like you never knew.

this is so much fun. Hoyt has a truly unique take on shifters. I'm looking forward to the next in this series.

A terrific story very entertainingly told

Hoyt has an amazing imagination and, this time, lets it loose on the world of “shifters” she created in Draw One in the Dark. Well, actually, she drew three, this being the second book of the series and it develops from the consequences of the actions of our heroes in the first.

In this book, the stakes are raised to life and death, ancient shifters with powers beyond what the protagonists could have imagined, but Hoyt does a brilliantly job of juxtaposing their very real daily issues — running a restaurant, maintaining complex relationships, dealing with a Colorado winter — while staving off vicious psychopaths in extinct animal form and solving a string of murders, while keeping their strange proclivity to shift into animal form themselves and find themselves back in human form with heir clothes elsewhere.

Oh, also, there is a cute kitten. What more do you need?

Great Story

Really liking the characters in this series. Good story telling with decent action. Not gratuitous at all.

Vaguely unsatisfying cozy urban fantasy

I suppose the Scooby mystery arc about body parts in the shark tank was diverting enough, but I had to slog through two other clunky arcs lacking in personality or sense. There’s a kitten, a crocodile shifter, and a dragon named Conan … which I would much preferred to have spent more time with over the two other arcs.

There’s the series arc about the Great Sky Dragon, wherein there’s barely any explanation of the hows or whys of the Triad organization, more teasing (without explanation) of Tom’s being special, and not a single appearance of said dragon beyond a few voice prrojections where pronouncements are made, but no actual dialogue happens. I’m preparing for an eventual letdown after all this buildup when (in book 3? Or 4, which isn’t even in Audible?) the big destiny reveal happens.

There’s an introduction of the shifter Alliance, and what I presume will be the counterpart to the dragon/Triad in future books. Here, however, there’s merely one guy, a caricature villain who’s so unhinged that he’s not at all credible as an evil mastermind. Don’t expect the hows and whys of the Alliance to get explained.

So, here we are, two books into the series, and there’s nobody from either faction willing to talk to our three MCs about thousands of years of paranormal history. Instead, there’s so much inner monologuing from Kyrie, Tom, and Rafiel about their newly formed philosophies of shifters and humans getting along. Ugh. So. Much. Talk. …and yet, So. Few. Answers.

Also, this is YA level urban fantasy, with 1 off screen sex scene, no F bombs, and cartoon level violence. I can appreciate cozy, YA stories, but I need a lot more action and humor to make up for the tameness. I’m continuing only because I already got book 3.