I've been reading The Tiger and the Wolf by Adrian Tchaikovsky

[conuly]

It mostly seems to be set in Not Bronze Age Europe, as seen by the fact that all the shapeshifters but one turn into animals you find scattered throughout Afro-Eurasia - horses, aurochs (okay, nobody shapeshifts into one, but they exist and so do domestic cattle), lions, tigers... and also coyotes.

That one misplaced detail wouldn't be so irritating* if there was also a tribe of shifter kangaroos or koalas. I'm just saying.

Oddly, nobody seems to shapeshift into any form of insect or other invertebrate. I say "oddly" because I didn't know he could write books without sapient invertebrates. Well, there's always the fanfic.

* I'm sure most readers consider this small potatoes, but then, most readers probably consider actual potatoes small potatoes when reading books set in Not Pre-Columbian Europe.

Comments

[heron61]

As a side-note, I found that book and its sequel rather odd, since it looks a whole lot like the prehistory of the RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse - each of the shifter tribes is pretty much exactly like they are in the RPG, complete with the crocodile shifters having a dinosaur form. You could make it a licensed novel merely by changing a few names - absolutely no other alternations would be necessary.

[archangelbeth]

This suggests, to my suspicious mind, that it was a spec W:TA book... (Or maybe started life as W:TA fanfic and someone noticed, "If I just change a few things, I could have fun writing this AND make money!"*)

(*Honestly, as the meme goes: Life Goals.)