cover image Frozen in Amber

Frozen in Amber

Phyllis Ames. DAW, $7.99 mass market (400p) ISBN 978-0-7564-0780-3

Ames’s urban fantasy debut relies on an angsty protagonist incoherently stumbling her way through a completely confusing plot. WerCougar Amber Treganis wakes up from a moonlit hunt after being shot and surrounded by four hunters. She’s ill for the first time in her life and unable to remember how she got to her own bed. Despite the injury, Amber goes to work at her grandfather’s law firm, defending a man who may have discovered a cure for shifting. But when her supervisor suddenly resigns, federal agents begin to tail her, and traps are mysteriously set in her house. Work colleagues turn out to be incestuously close relatives, while a plot-convenient relationship also develops between her and WerEagle Adler Schnee, as she continues trusting creepy doctors about the mysterious lump in her thigh left from that night. Not only is the plot baffling, but so are the protagonist’s actions and motivations, which veer from ignorant to nonsensical. [em](Aug.) [/em]