Oboroten

HONOR AND OBLIGATION ALLOW NO FLEXIBILITY FOR SYMPATHY OR MERCY

Jamie Wittenheim writes a gritty story that drives the “werewolf” legend into a new direction, removing it from the gypsy curse/bitten by a wolf folklore and giving it a mythos all its own. She creates her shape-shifting characters as an intelligent species comparable to humans but without the urge to ravage victims in a bestial fury. Instead, the Oboroteń are a reclusive people who live on the fringe of civilization—if even that close to it—and prefer to spend their lives in the wild. Yet, the superiority of humans who think they exist as the only intelligent species on earth, claim full dominion over it. The governing body of the Oboroteń understands the threat this poses to their race, especially with the Verband der Wolfsjäger hunting them to near extinction. The Pack leader uses his distant political pull with the American consul-general of the Karachay-Cherkess Republic to place one particular member of the Oboroteń into the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Pyotr Biryukov, a.k.a. Peter Stevenson, is that agent, and he has been instructed to do anything necessary to protect his people from exposure.

Oboroteń is a complex story of a crime committed against mild-mannered shape-shifters, leading into a federal investigation to find the culprit; while the nefarious dealings of political intrigue from two separate parties hone in on a federal agent who is willing to kill just to protect a secret that could end in genocide for his people. Jamie Whittenheim shatters the concept of a clear-cut hero with unwavering morals in creating Peter Stevenson. Not only does Peter embrace the wolf more than his man side, but he yearns to denounce the life prescribed for him by his bastardizing father, the leader of the Oboroteń. The animosity he harbors for both humans and the Pack grates on any sense of scruples he uses for a standard of measuring right from wrong.

Take a step outside the norm with a writer who knows how to do more than write a story following the lines of formula paranormal fiction. Jamie has a way of pulling the reader’s mind away from the unlikelihood of such a race of people existing by surrounding it with intrigue, suspense, and humor.