I made a mistake at Capricon: I bought A Killing Moon, the first book in Alexis D. Craig’s Winged Guardians series.
I read the first couple chapters at the convention, along with pages 119 through 121 to be sure I’d be comfortable reading them out loud to an audience. The panel’s title was judging a book by page 119; the presenters skipped to 119 or thereabouts and read a couple pages, then the audience gauged whether they’d be interested in reading the book before the title was revealed. As I explained after revealing the cover, the book kicks off (in the prologue) with a sex scene, so I skipped ahead to see if the page selection was going to be appropriate for all ages attending the panel.
I can’t reiterate this enough: when given the opportunity to buy books directly from the author at an event, buy the whole damn series. I had to set A Killing Moon down for a couple review books, then breezed through it and wanted more… you know, those other three books that I failed to buy at the convention.
The book itself is a paranormal romance filled with shapeshifters, along with some assassination attempts and palace intrigue. The protagonists are a werewolf and were-crow, and many other were-species are mentioned in this robust hidden world intertwined with ours. Craig clearly has a knack for writing characters that obviously belong together both in and out of the bedroom (living room, and other places) and showing the character evolution as they reach that realization.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to go place a book order.