And if the Church discovers her secret, Regeane will burn at the stake. The most notorious, her depraved uncle and guardian, will not scruple to betray her to the Church unless she aids him in his sinister schemes. Betrothed by Charlemagne's command to a barbarian lord she has never seen, Regeane is surrounded by enemies. Possessed of preternatural agility and strength, primal memories extending back thousands of years, and senses so keen they can pierce the veil of death itself, Regeane is a shapeshifter: woman and wolf, hunter and hunted. But unknown to those plotting against her, the blood she has inherited from her murdered father makes her much more than a child of royalty. Regeane's regal blood renders her an unwilling pawn in the struggle for political power.
Now, into the Eternal City comes Regeane, a beautiful young woman distantly related, through her dead mother, to Charlemagne. Decadent Rome at the dawn of the Dark Ages is mired in crumbling grandeur. (July) FYI: The galley to Silver Wolf carries a note to ""Dear Reader"" from Borchardt's sister, Anne Rice, stating that ""it is with immense joy that I introduce to you a daring and vibrant new voice on the female literary frontier""-although the novel is Borchardt's third.In this new historical romantic fantasy of stunning originality and scope, Alice Borchardt breathes life into a bygone age, brilliantly recreating a sensuous, violent world-and the men and women whose grand ambitions, betrayals, and passions shape the era in which they live and die. Readers who like their fantasy dusted with gritty realism and who can forgive anachronistic modern dialogue in a period melodrama will find themselves indulged with more than a few twists to this werewolf tale. She elaborates the decadent excesses of the time with gleefully vivid descriptions of gluttonous banquets, grotesque leper colonies and violent lusts sated both on the battlefield and in the bridal bed. In Regeane, whose woman and wolf selves often spar contentiously with one another, Borchardt finds the perfect metaphor for the once opulent Roman civilization, now hostage to its bestial appetites. Intrigues and counterplots abound as Maeniel speeds his way to retrieve his reluctant bride and Regeane lends her supernatural powers to curing the leprous Antonius, whom the Lombards hope to use to discredit his father, Pope Hadrian, and turn the Roman citizens against Charlemagne's advancing Catholic army.
Distantly related to Charlemagne, she becomes a pawn between the French and Italy's scrappy Lombards when she is betrothed to Maeniel, guardian of a passage through the Alps who is sympathetic to the French king. Regeane is a secretive shapeshifter living in Rome at the end of the Empire's decline.
Borchardt spices her usual recipe for breathy historical romance (Devoted, etc.) with a generous pinch of the supernatural.
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