Review: Change of Heart

Title: Change of Heart
Series: Change of Heart
Author: Mary Calmes
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Publication Date: 8 November 2009
Reviewed Format: ebook
Length: 260 pages

Rating: 2 out of 5

Review: Jin is a rarity among rarities: a male reah, the intended mate to a semel, the leader of a werepanther tribe. Driven out of his tribe as an abomination, he and his lifetime friend, Crane, set out across the country, never settling anywhere for long. That all changes when three tribes discover what he is--and decide that they each must have him. Will the threat of an end to Jin's independence send him running again, or will he find the one thing that could make him stop?

Jin tends to run hot and cold in ways that don't really make sense to me. One moment, he's swearing that he wants nothing to do with a mate, the next he's begging for Logan to use him like a nickel whore. It's almost like he's brainwashed in parts, and the explanation of his reactions to Logan as being normal for a semel and reah just doesn't jive for me, particularly given his desperate struggle for independence.

Logan never really struck me as anything beyond a chest-beating übermale. I couldn't see him as a great leader under Jin's influence (or, rather, with Jin's overly-distracting presence) and his possessiveness/obsessiveness over Jin was ridiculously overblown; the explanation that was offered again just didn't sit right. He never really evolved past a testosterone-laden jerk to me.

The relationship between Jin and Logan was far more violent than I usually prefer, and far more than was necessary, to my mind. The amount of biting and clawing and bleeding during their sexual encounters was downright off-putting, especially with the emphasis on how orgasmic the violence was. Maybe my skin's just too thin, but I had to walk away more than once. Even the sex scenes I think were intended to be sweet involved violent behavior; there was no escaping it.

The supporting cast was okay, with high points and low points. A few of them struck me as brainwashed also; Logan's father springs immediately to mind. The 180 in his behavior with a throwaway explanation made me wonder how he'd ever been semel, also; it just wasn't consistent in what you'd expect from someone in his position. Other characters were built up before disappearing entirely, which got annoying--why should I continue to care about a character that the author doesn't?

The story itself was so tangled in the characters that I found I couldn't escape my dislike for them long enough to enjoy it. The world-building was interesting, as was the physical development of the werepanthers, so I feel like it's a failure on my part that I couldn't immerse myself in that, at least, despite the characters. The writing itself was good, also, with only a few errors I caught. My main complaint there is inconsistent italicizing; sometimes the society-specific words were italicized, sometimes they weren't.

That being said--there was a bit too much repetition when it came to defining terms. If I didn't know what reah meant by the end of the first chapter, defining it again and again throughout the rest of the book wasn't going to help me. On the other hand, some terms weren't ever adequately defined; I'm still not entirely certain what role a sylvan plays, for example. The inconsistency was a bit annoying by the end, honestly, and the repetition distracted me more than once.

In the end, this was just not the book for me. Part of it may be my lack of familiarity with shifter stories--it's never been a particular interest for me--so someone who particularly enjoys them may get more out of this, For me, it set a tone for the genre that I didn't enjoy much at all, and which makes me leery of trying similar books. I may have liked this more had I known what to expect going into it, but, as it stands, I think I'll be taking a break from the genre for a while.