Wolfbreed

Starred review from July 13, 2009
Religion and political intrigue turn an adolescent werewolf into a killing machine in this compelling novel of 13th-century Northern Europe. Eighteen-year-old Lilly is superhumanly strong, vulnerable only to silver and trained to help Christians subdue unrepentant pagans. When she slaughters a dozen Christian soldiers and flees into the wilderness, Uldolf, the son of Johnsburg's last pagan chieftain, takes her in. As they come to terms with their histories, the knight Erhard von Stendal comes to hunt Lilly down. Lilly's struggle to reconcile her split personalities—cold assassin and lonely girl—becomes a quest for redemption and love as she endures rape, amnesia and the knowledge of her own terrible actions in the church's service. Swann (Prophets
) turns opposing viewpoints into sympathetic perspectives, clearly painting the complex political and religious dynamics of the time.

August 1, 2009
In early-thirteenth-century Transylvania, a sympathetic soldier acquiesces to the entreaties of a young woman locked in a cell without sustenance, whose putrefying broken leg is trapped in a silver shackle, and opens the door. Then she transforms into a wolflike creature, slays the company of soldiers, and escapes the castle. Her memory destroyed, Lilly is found by one-armed Uldolf, who takes her back to his adoptive family, struggling to survive under the iron fist of the Teutonic Order. The natives, subjugated and converted to Christianity by their German conquerors, are suspected of sheltering Lilly, who had been used as a weapon in the conquest. Swanns exquisite werewolf historical brings the era vividly to life as the perfect setting for his conflicted, multidimensional characters. This may be the werewolf book of the year, for, filled with action, romance, gore, and political intrigue, its a fresh, page-turning take on werewolf tropes that is not to be missed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)