"terrific dark teen fantasy"

High school student Jennifer Scales knows how tough a mixed racial heritage can be on a teen. On her maternal side, Jennifer descends from powerful beaststalkers; on her paternal side, she comes from powerful were-dragons. That blending would prove difficult for anyone in spite of the obvious love between her parents, but beaststalkers have always hunted were-dragons and were-dragons have always attacked beaststalkers.

Jennifer wishes everyone would learn to get along. With that in mind she visits her father's clan only to have Xavier Longtail the elder dragon informs her that she is crazy going against the natural order of life and death. Her former boyfriend Skip the were-arachnid gives her a necklace and takes her to a movie where she dozes. Afterward, she finds her family vanished with no record of their existence as the were-arachnid mages cast an eradication spell; she lives because the necklace caused the spell to skip her. Jennifer needs to restore the old order before the new order finds her.

This terrific dark teen fantasy scales stratospheric heights with an exciting story line that takes a deep look at mixed racial couples and their biracial offspring. Unlike Jennifer Scales and the Messenger of Light in which the heroine plays Nancy Drew in fantasyland, THE SILVER MOON ELM is a pure fantasy quest as Jennifer is at her best risking her life to bring back her non-existent loved ones.

Harriet Klausner

Reviewed by Harriet Klausner
Posted May 29, 2007

Summary

Scaly skin, family fights...it's tough being a teenage dragon.

Jennifer was just starting to get comfortable in her own skin, scaly as it is. She should have known that, as half-weredragon, half-beaststalker, things don't stay normal for too long...

Following through on a promise made to her mother, Jennifer agrees to go to Crescent Valley, where Jennifer and her father find refuge with other weredragons, and where they meet Xavier Longtail. Xavier, a powerful elder dragon, doesn't believe in peaceful co-existence, and after he stirs up trouble in her family, Jennifer wonders if he isn't right. She's about to go nuts with all the fighting, when her ex, Skip, comes to her rescue and whisks her off to the movies, where she falls asleep...

Waking up, Jennifer finds her hometown overrun by weachnids, dangerous half-werewolves, half-spiders. Weredragons are long extinct...except for Jennifer, of course, and the ominous Xavier Longtail, and it's up to them to return the universe to normal. Can they trust each other enough to pull it off-or are they the last of a dying breed?