Brief Encounters

Title: Under a Confederate Moon
Author: JM Snyder
Length: 17,197 words
Publisher: JMS Books
Genre: m/m historical paranormal
Rating: B

Blurb:
Book 1 in Between States

Bitten as a teen, Caleb now suffers through a painful transformation from human to bobcat a few days each month. As a bobcat, he leaves behind his camp and fellow soldiers to explore the night. But a gunshot and the bright scent of fresh blood draws him to a clearing where he learns that he isn’t the only one of his kind.

Wounded and hurt, Brance is a loner by nature, gruff and grumbling, who doesn’t want anything to do with Caleb … at first. The younger bobcat prevails, and starts to win Brance over, until they turn human again and find themselves on opposite sides of the American Civil War.

Review:
I’m the first to admit I’m not a huge fan of shifter books, but this historical caught my eye and made me take a chance. It’s also a Bobcat shifter book rather than a wolf and so I thought that difference sounded appealing too. The story places us straight into the American Civil War – a period of history I know absolutely nothing about. Caleb, who is a Confederate soldier, is into the first of his three nights of shifting when he comes across another bobcat shifter, Brance. He’s overjoyed and they spend the night becoming better acquainted. However, when he awakes the next morning he discovers that Brance is a Yankee soldier.

Caleb isn’t the most sympathetic of characters in this story, mainly because of the cowardly way he acts at a crucial moment in the story, but I still found myself drawn to him and his story of how he ended up a soldier and a bobcat.  Plus he gets a chance to redeem himself later.   Brance is a slightly distant figure. The fact that he is taciturn by nature contributed to this, but also that Caleb’s narrative didn’t allow the reader to see much of Brance other than through his rather lustful thoughts. This is only the first of three parts though and I’m hoping that I’ll find out more about Brance as the story progresses.

The historical setting was detailed enough to put us firmly in a time and place, with a few interesting details, but didn’t overwhelm the story.

My one niggle is that quite a lot of the romance in the book takes place when the men are in their shifted form. Whilst some of this was interesting – especially in the way the two use body language to show their feelings – I felt slightly uneasy about the references to arousal whilst in their shifted form. I’m not a fan of shifted sex because it’s a fine line from bestiality in my opinion. There’s even a scene where the men shift during sex that left me a little uncomfortable, although the shifting wasn’t described in detail and it was modestly done.

That niggle wasn’t enough to put me off though, and I look forward to reading the next story in the series. Those who like shifter books and are looking for an unusual setting can’t go wrong with this historical.