Dance of the Pink Mist (Cracked Chronicles #2) by K.D. Van Brunt

Gray has been captured by Cracked and is under Jace’s command. He must quickly adapt to the high standards of his new prison – or he will be disposed of as any shapeshifter is if they don’t fit into Cracked.

Jace quickly turns from an enemy to an essential ally in helping Gray fit into the prison life – and he grows closer to her team and their ongoing mission

He also grows closer to her – as their telepathy and relationship come together into something new and completely outside both their experiences.

I was pleasantly surprised how this book worked – I expected a lot of resentment and angst and snarling between Gray and Jace. Their epic hostility would continue for most of the book until eventually the inevitable romance developed

Well, I was partly right

Instead of going down that clichéd route, Jace and Gray seem to mesh quite well from the beginning. A lot of this stems from Gray’s excellent personality. He’s easy going, he’s gentle, he’s not going to blame Jace for being an enslaved part of the system any more than he blames himself. He’s not going to rebel for the sake of it, nor is he going to fight a battle he can’t win. He’s going to do the very best he can in a bad situation, make sure he survives and then see how he can manage for freedom and existence from there. He also quickly recognises that people around him are trying to help him survive and he buries any resentment.

It’s a refreshingly mature attitude. And if I have any criticism of it it’s that it’s just a little… too perfect? Gray’s assimilation into Cracked, his adaptation, the difficulties he faces et all are all just… kind of easy. There’s little depiction of any real struggles over this new life he’s living, there’s no anger or grief or frustration over becoming a prisoner and effective slave. It’s freakishly smooth and probably too smooth. This is even more obvious when we see how quickly he makes friends and gets by with the other inmates – sure part of this can be explained by the fact he is Jace’s protégé and she is top of the pile, but in the last book it really emphasised how brutal and cut throat Cracked was with lots of violent competition between the inmates.

Win the Rings by K.D. Van Brunt

Shapeshifters can turn into perfect copies of people – any person – with just one touch. And that doesn’t just mean appearance, that means their memories and skills as well. One touch and they can become them any time. After one shapeshifter nearly bankrupt a city, the US military quickly intervened under a secret executive order and all shaepshifters are found and imprisoned – raised, trained and by the army in brutal surroundings. Evading them is a crime, free shapeshifters are hunted.

Jace has been in the army prison since she was 5 years old. It was hard, it was brutal – and she is both of those things. She also wants to be free… which means earning her freedom

Gray ran, he’s spent his whole life on the run, but he’s finally been noticed and hunted. Gray’s freedom may be the price of Jace finally escaping.

This world is an interesting wrong, bringing in shapeshifting as a power and mixing it with elements of mind reading to make a truly original and rather frightening story. Beings who can read the minds and memories of those they have turned into – the threat they represent is incredible which in turn leads to them being brutally oppressed and denied anything resembling rights as human beings – this widescale kidnapping and holding of them works and remains realistic in the story simply because they never forget how much of a threat they are – we are constantly reminded in subtle ways just how dangerous a shapeshifter is.

I think the world building also works because there’s a limit on anything else out there. Gray and his sister have a form of telepathy that suggests maybe there is more out there, but the author has resisted the temptation to crowd the story. We have one supernatural, we have the world adjusted to control and use this supernatural. This is their stories – we don’t need other psychics, weremoose, and-whatever-monster-we’re-calling-fae-this-week.

This tight focus works to keep the story moving – and makes it a very good first book. We get the characters introduced, motivated and developed in excellent but not long winded detail. Everything is focused on them and their journey so you really get to know these people without distraction. The world isn’t overly complicated nor is the story confused or twisted – it’s pretty focused. The military controls all shapeshifters (to stop them running amok in uncontrolled ways and to use them to run amok the way they want to) in, basically, a prison. Jace can earn her freedom by serving her masters – and that serice means bringing in shapeshifters who have managed to dodge the system; like Gray.

It’s not a complex or twisted story (though there are elements of one to come in future books). But it’s clear lines let us focus on the characters, let them explore this (again, not overly complicated) world and establish everything perfectly

And this is ideal because I love the protagonist, Jace and Gray.  Starting with Jace: ok, I would expect someone raised in a government facility to be rather more brainwashed than she was, but that’s clearly not been the way she was raised and there’s some quasi explanation for it. The main reason I like her is that she has all of the usual excuse we have for a complete arsehole of a character – the tragic past, being completely friendless, being relentlessly bullied and constantly having to fight for her place – yet she isn’t that arsehole. She’s hard. She’s harsh. She’s unforgiving and uncompromising. She has a control streak 10 miles wide But she’s fair within her own rules, she’s willing to fight for other people as much as for herself. She has a strong sense of duty even if she doesn’t like or isn’t particularly nice to the people she feels dutiful towards (or if they don’t like her either). She has a short temper, but it doesn’t reach the comical levels we see so often in the genre with protagonists lashing out like berserkers at the slightest thing. And she’s selfish – or, rather, she’s focused on her own goal. She wants to get out, she wants to escape the prison she has lived in all her life – and if that means she has to work for an organisation she loathes and even hurt someone else in the process – well, needs much. In fact, she’s not selfish – but she isn’t a martyr. And that doesn’t make her a bad person – she does what she has to within the limits of her terrible situation