Rating: 1 1/2 stars

Ulrika and her tribe were found, captured, and experimented upon by ITOR. She was the only survivor of the experiments, molded into the ultimate assassin – a werewolf on a shock collar leash, a Jekyll and Hyde trigger into change by remote control.

Readers greet her first as an escapee, surviving by placating her inner wolf by dominating men in underground sex clubs. Rik knows that she must do whatever it takes to keep the wolf inside, for she has no control over her other side, and when inner becomes outer,there is invariably bloodshed and death.

A natural dominant, Trance has been assigned by the Agency for Covert Rare Operatives to bring Ulrika in. He must seduce Ulrika into submitting to his will … yet the only way to do so is to submit to hers. Trance must fight his natural instincts, granting her pleasure with his pain and manipulating her and her wolf over time. Because if Trance doesn’t bring her in, ITOR will.

I’ll be honest. I read the back cover and I was fine, really I was. Then I opened the book. For the first five pages or so, I had to make myself keep reading, because I had to fight the “okay, this is all woo-woo bull’ instinct: I had a this-is-so-unbelievable-I-can’t-willingly-suspend-disbelief struggle. I had to talk myself through it, and think until I remembered some distant memory of a History Channel clip or National Geographic article – I can’t even remember now which – that might have referenced something that was vaguely like the starting premise for Ulrika’s character; that she originally came from a tribe of therianthropes, people that claimed to shift, spiritually and psychologically but not physically into an animal. Until then, I could not willingly suspend my disbelief and even so, I had much more luck going with the werewolf premise than with the premise that someone can be made through experiments to physically become what one has been imagining they are and swap back and forth from form to form.

I’ve had no issue with reading novels that have run a gamut of topics and involved a wide range of characters; you name it, I’ve read it but this really strained the boundaries of credulity with me. The nice men in white suits would normally come pick up a man who thought he was a squirrel, running up and down trees for nuts and chirping at everything, much less a snarling woman who thought she was a wolf – yet both of those instances were mentioned. This series is supposedly set in our world; this just doesn’t ring true.

The one high point: what points I have I've given for the close attention to detail paid by both authors to the physical scenarios between Rik and Trance, irregardless of who’s on ‘top’. All scenarios are elegantly and accurately written, with knowledge of urethral sounds that I honestly did not expect.

For fans of this series, I apologize: I haven’t been able to uncover any hints as to when the next novel in this series will be released. However, I have been able to confirm that a contract was signed for six novels, so there are two more novels in this series in the works.
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ISBN: 978-0-385-34227-8
Publication date May 5, 2009, through Delta