Healer’s Choice-Jory Strong

Healer’s Choice
Jory Strong
Berkley, Sep 7 2010, $15.00
ISBN: 9780425236536

Rebekka spends a lot time healing patrons and employees of the shapeshifter brothels a place where she was born and loosely raised. Her unique skill is to save a shapeshifter caught trapped between their two forms. However, by doing this, the victim must choose one shape because the cure includes no more shapeshifting between the beast and the human forms.

Aryck the Jaguar were enforcer learns of Rebekka’s healing skills. To prevent a tragedy of five cubs dying from a man-made plague, he searches for her to bring her back to Were held territory to help the ailing youngsters. It is a place where humans and half-breeds are not allowed. Attracted to each other, Rebekka agrees to help, but both soon realize the plague is the first step in a larger genocide plan.

This is a Strong post-apocalyptic urban fantasy as a race war seems imminent in a world torn apart by de facto violence. As in Ghostland, the story line is action-packed but it is the profound look at the purebreds and mixed breeds that make this a powerful tale. Star-crossed lovers, Rebekka knows she is an expendable pawn in a world gone mad in which long dead ancestors punish their descendents for crossing taboo lines as the healer is doing yet she knows she has no choice.

Harriet Klausner