Silverhorn

Champié (Memoirs of the Grey Ranger) places a fated mystical Celtic shapeshifter romance into the American Northwest by shoehorning a Native American connection into the backstory. This mix is awkward at best, but her depiction of the relationship between the mundane and magical worlds is full of good humor and is low-key mythic in its own right. Willa MacLeod, songwriter and lead singer of the rock band Blackwater, finally gets her reward for waiting in the woods near Silverhorn Canyon, where her mother disappeared after her father was injured in the Gulf War. She encounters the legendary Silverhorn Stag, who’s actually Corwyn, one of the last descendants of the Sithé. He has been waiting for her to become his prophesied love so he can initiate her into her own shapeshifting magic. Willa’s warm, easy relationships with and acceptance by her friends, band members, and father carry the story, even once things get strange; the romance, however, is blandly soft-focus, the conflicts slightly forced, and the lineage story a bit too tidy. Readers who enjoy a modern fairy tale may find this appealing but ultimately unmemorable. (Nov.)