Nightshade Trilogy Book Series Review

 

Long time no review I know but I’ve been super busy and it is taking forever to get through one book but recently I’ve had a craving for werewolf stories and since re-reading The Wolves of Mercy Falls just won’t cut it I turned to you guys for suggestions. The Nightshade trilogy by Andrea Cremer was the first suggestion and, co-incidentally, the only full series the book shop had in stock so while I await the delivery of my mini-werewolf-library I have read this trilogy.

The Nightshade trilogy opens in the first person with Calla and very quickly there is terminology being thrown about. Guardians, Master, Mistress, Keeper, and no, before you ask, this is not 50-shades-of-werewolf. In fact you’re not supposed to call them werewolves, they are Guardians.

So Calla, alpha-to-be, is running around the woods in wolf form, on patrol, with her beta Bryn and ends up bringing down a grizzly bear in order to save Shay, although at the time he’s more like ‘the guy who smells like meadows who I’d like to do in a meadow’. Already we’re knee deep in action with a bloody kill, a fierce rescue and Calla’s teenage mind overcome with thoughts of making out with meadow-man. We’re also shown a glimpse of some Guardian powers as Shay has been mortally slashed open so Calla transforms back into a human before his eyes and makes him drink her blood in an entirely non-vampiric way. The gift of blood conveys healing and thus Shay’s life is saved and she hopes he’ll wake up thinking it was all a bad dream.

When not running around in the forest Calla goes to school with her pack where she gets hit on by her intended Ren. Now there are two packs in this back end of no where, the Nightshades and the Banes. Calla is daughter of the Nightshade alpha and Ren is the son of the Bane alpha. Then you have the Keepers who, among other things, are basically dog breeders. Each pack has a ‘Keeper’ and they have to do what they say or terrible things will happen to them. And the Keepers have said Ren and Calla, along with the sum total of 8 other ‘pups’, are going to get together a form a new pack. This is big news because this hasn’t happened in ages apparently. That said, don’t think that this is Calla trapped in a loveless marriage-to-be, there is definitely Ralla chemistry, in fact, I quite liked the Ralla chemistry.

Then Shay turns up during chemistry, the class, not a make out session, as the new kid in school. Upon seeing Calla he realises he didn’t have a furry dream and is then very keen and very outspoken. Calla is charged with being friendly by her pack’s Keeper-to-be Logan (sadly not the beefy one from the X-Men) and her and Shay can’t keep themselves off each other.

However Calla is conflicted. On the one hand, we have I-smell-like-meadows-Shay and on the other we have I-want-you-right-now-Ren. Shay’s opinion of Ren is that no one can force Calla to marry him, yadda yadda modern woman yadda yadda. Which is of course very true, arranged marriages aren’t exactly pro-choice, but Shay is a bit like a dog with a bone (all of the puns) and won’t shut up about it. Even though Calla is like…well I do actually kinda like Ren when I’m not making out with you and he has me pinned up against the lockers. What’s a girl to do?

Apparently sneak into what the Guardians are supposed to be guarding but never look at with Shay, steal the contents with Shay, nearly get herself killed, nearly get Shay killed and then turn Shay into a Guardian to save his life.

In the mean time, of the 8 remaining pack-to-be (I forget who was from what pack in some cases) we have two betas, two bitches, one sheep, one brother and two gay guys, who are together. Those last two being Mason and Neville who I loved because they were just there, and in a relationship and just doing it. It didn’t come across as a novelty or that they’d just been put in there to tick ‘my-book-contains-homosexuals’ off the list. Which I have felt some books do, no offense.

So while the humans of the school are having a halloween party, Calla is bedecked in ivory frills and finery and whisked off to marry Ren. However, while waiting for her entrance to the ceremony she catches the sent of meadows and finds Shay tied up and ready to be sacrificed, by her, as part of her wedding ceremony, and guarded by a succubus. Free-ing Shay the pair make a run for it to Shay’s home, or rather his uncle Bosque Mar’s home, to retrieve some books and things. There they are attacked by zombies and succubi and chased by other wolves and then ‘rescued’ by Searchers. Aka. the sworn enemies of Guardians.
Thus ends book one.
Then I forget where book 2 ends because I read Wolfsbane and Bloodrose back to back but basically the Searches are the good guys, the Guardians are being lied to and manipulated, Shay jumps through portals around the world to retrieve the other 3 parts of The Cross (aka two elemental swords) to ultimately lead a revolution against the Keepers and drive Bosque Mar back into some equivalent of hell. A bunch of people die and then there’s a little twist at the end which I actually kind of liked.

Spoiler for the end.
Shay, Calla and the rest of the Guardians (bar one because reasons) become wolves permanently. And there’s a nice little epilogue of them being observed running around in the snow and being happy…as wolves.
Spoiler end.

There are things I liked about this series and there were a couple of moments I really liked but overall I felt there was too much going on, too many characters and the one thing that really, really annoyed me was SPOILER that Ren died. And it wasn’t even that that I had the problem with. Calla spends all three books um-ing and ah-ing, she has sex with Shay but then goes to Ren and says ‘come fight with me and we may yet end up together’ and gives him the come on and clearly does have feelings for him. But instead of actually choosing, instead of making a conscious choice, the choice is made for her by killing one off.

I went looking for books about werewolves, I would not say this is a book about werewolves, it is a book with wolf-changing people in it. It’s more about teenage-hormone-drama and higher magic problems. With some family issues on the side just to make sure everyone is miserable at least once.

But there is lots of action and lots of wolf based action that’s described really well and you really get a sense for the wolves. But I wouldn’t say there’s much pack behaviour. And no I don’t count sitting together at lunch and walking through hallways together like your Ezio from Assassin’s Creed ‘pack behaviour’. But then this might be because the Guardians weren’t independent, their every move, including who they married and how many kids they had and when they had them, was watched and controlled by the Keepers. So they were behaving more like trained hunting dogs than a pack of wolves.

The only other problem I had was the problem I always have with first person. I end up more interested in what everyone else is doing off camera and unless Calla was spying on them or kidnapped you didn’t see it. Not that this happened a lot but there were times when I’d have preferred to be following another character. The other problem was I felt Calla, until the last half of the third book, was being pushed around a bit and having the men-folk make the decisions and the moves for her.

All in all, an alright set of books but I won’t be re-reading them. I did, however, love the cover set.