Book ninety: Stray

Stray* (2007)
Rachel Vincent

Rating: 4/5

The thing I liked most about this is that while it is the start of a series, the book still finished a story arc. There is nothing I hate more than a book that is so obviously just the Start of a Series.

Not so with this book. Things were different at the end – important things, not just that they caught the bad guys.

Oh, did I not mention there are bad guys?

Faythe Sanders likes to pretend she's a normal college co-ed, but that's only half the truth. It's the other half that matters when her former lover appears on campus, sent to pull her back into a life her classmates could never understand, or even imagine. He has come to take her home, to where hunting doesn’t involve guns, the night isn’t for sleeping, and fur is much more than just a fashion statement.

Female werecats are disappearing from all over the south, and the Pride is helpless to find its missing members and stop the stray responsible. Confined to home for her own protection, Faythe must face everything she went to school to escape: the family she left behind, the love she turned her back on, and the destiny tradition says she's bound to fulfill. And when it all becomes too much to handle, an emotionally charged error in judgment leads her into the unsheathed claws of the stray himself. Now, armed with nothing but animal instinct and a serious attitude, Faythe must free herself and stop the kidnappers before their horrific plot robs her Pride of its most valuable asset: its own continued existence.

It has an interesting plot and characters (though, I could have done with a few less brother to keep track of). And surprisingly even though I would like to give the main character, Faythe, a good shake, she didn’t annoy me that much.

Usually someone acting so irresponsibly and immature would annoy me no end, but it just seemed justified in a way. Or maybe I can just relate to her. Sure, she’s a warecat, but she’s also going through ‘normal’ things: feeling confined by her families expectations, not knowing what she wants to do with her life, dealing with mistakes she has made in the past and not knowing how to stop making mistakes right now.

I think this could have benefited from either a more original world or less explanation of that world. I think it was a little too close to Kelley Armstrong’s Broken in some aspects, but I suppose if I hadn’t of read that or other books in the genre, I wouldn’t have been able to skip paragraphs explaining the whole warecat/Pride thing and still understand everything that was going on.

Obviously now I want to read Rouge (scheduled for release April 2008) and Pride (Fall 2008**).

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* Finished: Sunday 1/7

** I hate when they say “Fall”… when is that exactly? It’s too confusing.

Presumably, Autumn in the U.S., will be Spring in Australia, right? Or is that a stupid assumption?

Anyway, I’ll just go with it… so that means, sometime between September and November? October is six months after the April release of book two. So that could be right… or it could be terribly wrong.

I hardly ever see things in Australia – like movies, books, whatever – as “Summer 2389” or the like. What is it with American people and their love of seasons as a marker of time? Does everyone know which months are “Fall”? Because I have to admit, my working out when spring is (which is probably wrong) required counting. Heh.