Anne Rice's sister, Alice Borchardt, has created her own unforgettable characters in the savvy werewoman Regeane and company in The Silver Wolf.

Set in post-Empire Rome, this first novel not only beguiles with infinite intrigues and marvelous characters such as Lucilla, courtesan to Pope Hadrian, and Antonius, the Pope's leper brother, but also is lavish in its rich depictions of this all-too-little known era.

Borchardt, like her sister, wordpaints in broad strokes across a silken canvas with vivid and seductive colors. The amalgam that is Regeane, woman and werewolf, is handled deftly and what, from a lesser writer's pen, could be distractingly confusing is lush and richly readable prose.

Thank goodness this is just the first book!

by Stephen Richmond
Rambles.NET
4 March 2006