Review: Lion’s Tale by Jordan L. Hawk

Title: Lion’s Tale

Series: The Pride: Book Two

Author: Jordan L. Hawk

Length: 242 Pages

Category: Urban Fantasy, Historical Romance

Rating: 5 Stars

At a Glance: Found family and deep, abiding love is something Jordan L. Hawk does so brilliantly. It’s a feature of his storytelling that never runs out of ways to touch my heart.

Reviewed By: Lisa

Blurb: Control the booze. Control the magic. Control Chicago.

Sam Cunningham just wants a quiet life with his lover, the cheetah-shifter Alistair Gatti. But that hope is dashed when a member of Mickey Sullivan’s gang dies inside the Gatti family’s speakeasy.

Sullivan wants Sam to work for him, deciphering long-forgotten hexes as part of his illegal hexworks operation. At the same time, a corrupt prohibition agent demands Sam and Alistair investigate the gang member’s murder. Caught between gangster and agent, they must walk a fine line just to stay alive.

Because the sinister forces behind the killing are still out there, and now they have Sam in their sights…

Review: There’s a reason Jordan L. Hawk’s Hexbreaker is my favorite of all his many brilliant additions to the Historical Fantasy genre. It explores the bond between a witch and his familiar from a deeply romantic angle—something that is certainly not a prerequisite to the bond, but is exceedingly true for the witch Tom Halloran and his cat shifter Cicero. The bond between witch and familiar is soul-deep, sacrosanct, and essential in a way that makes their talents more potent.

When that bond is broken, the physical pain is acute and, in the case of Alistair Gatti, psychologically crippling.

Lion’s Tale takes place decades later in the Hexworld universe, during the Roaring ’20s, when gangland activity in Chicago was at its height, and bootlegging was near to obligatory to serve the masses during Prohibition. The police were corrupt, the Feds corrupter, as witches didn’t need a look-away hex to keep the law from shutting down the speakeasies. They merely needed a little cash, and perhaps a glass of whiskey that wasn’t cut with poison, to make the law turn a blind eye.

Sam Cunningham isn’t the innocent he was when he ran away from his vile family and arrived on the doorsteps of The Pride in need of a job. That doesn’t mean, however, that his heart has hardened. Sam is still as vulnerable to his feelings as he’s always been—even when the people he’s compassionate toward don’t deserve it in the least. And most certainly when he comes across a new familiar who makes Sam feel a sense of pride in himself. And, eventually, makes him an offer he is finding it difficult to refuse.

The action and suspense in this novel is breathtaking, especially the romantic suspense. There are a variety of bad actors in Tiger’s Tale, dangerous adversaries who force both Sam and Alistair into the proverbial rock and a hard place. I firmly believe the old idiom “catching a tiger by the tail” gave this book its title, because it applies to the story in every way. And watching Alistair and Sam try to wrangle all the bad actors, especially Sam in the most angst-filled and dangerous climax I’ve read in a while, was nothing less than exquisite.

Found family and deep, abiding love is something Jordan L. Hawk does so brilliantly. It’s a feature of his storytelling that never runs out of ways to touch my heart. This story continues where Blind Tiger left off, with Alistair’s fear of bonding with and then losing another witch, not to mention someone he loves. The scars of World War I figure prominently into Alistair’s characterization, which Hawk renders beautifully into the vividness of the time and place this world is set in.