Shifter romances are a thing. A big, exuberant, all the fun and hot sexy shifter guys (and gals and even nonbinaries) you can eat thing. They’re usually written by pseudonymous authors—and some of those pseudonyms may actually be a consortium of writers writing in the same universe with interconnected characters.
Like shifter cozy mysteries, shifter romances feature one or more shifters per novel and per universe. Romances, unlike cozies which can stretch out the attraction through a whole series, traditionally wrap up the love story within a single volume. The point of the story is the relationship, and it must end in “HEA”—Happy Ever After.
That doesn’t mean there can’t be series set within the same universe. Think Bridgerton. Each member of a family gets their own story and their own romance. The rest of the family will move in and out and even play major roles in the overall plot, but again, the relationship is the focus.
Shifter romances can feature any human-to-animal transformation you can imagine, and maybe a few you can’t. Real-world or mythical, anything goes. As witness Elva Birch’s six-book series (with book 6 coming out this summer), Royal Dragons of Alaska.
Alaska is a mythic realm to begin with: vast landscape, thinly populated, rich with natural resources. Birch turns it into a kingdom, one of several around the world, ruled by a family of dragon shifters and overseen by the ancient and magical Compact. The world otherwise is much like our own, with much the same political entities and the same fashions and technologies.
Birch’s dragons have existed in secret for centuries. Humans know about the royal families, but think the dragon references are heraldic and symbolic rather than literal. When in dragon form, shifters are invisible to human eyes. They’re a flicker in the corner of an eye in daylight and a shimmer of Northern Lights at night.
Dragons are not the only shifters in the world. There are wolf and dog shifters in the books, and a polar bear shifter who is Alaska Native and completely badass. But it’s dragons who are top of the shifter food chain, and the six sons of the dragon king of Alaska are the stars of the series.
The overall arc of the books is a crisis in the dragon world. The king of Alaska has gone to sleep in dragon form and cannot be awakened. No one knows if he ever will be. Meanwhile his sons have to confront a major event: the renewal of the Compact.
The Compact is the code of laws which rules the dragon kingdoms. It’s a magical entity in itself, and because magic always fades, it has to be renewed every hundred years. The renewal ceremony requires both a king and a queen from each of the kingdoms, and they must be a bonded pair, chosen and brought together by the magic of the Compact.
To further complicate matters, if the bonded ruler is incapacitated, the inheritance doesn’t simply pass to the eldest child. The heir must have a bonded mate. No mate, no rule. Which for Alaska means that if the king doesn’t wake in time (and everyone is pretty sure he won’t), one of his sons must find a mate before the renewal ceremony. If that doesn’t happen, the renewal can’t happen, and the magical consequences will be dire.
In the first volume of the series, The Dragon Prince of Alaska, everyone is expecting the king’s very competent elder son to inherit the throne. But then a fugitive shows up in one of the state’s parks, running from a murder charge, and the Compact brings her chosen mate straight to her. Not the eldest son at all, but the youngest one. The jock, the playboy. The one who never thought he’d have to worry about ruling a kingdom.
Carina, falsely framed for murder, never imagined she could be a princess, either. But she doesn’t get a choice. The magic has locked on. She’s the destined queen of Alaska—or so it seems. Just as her chosen prince, Toren, is meant to be king.
Or are they?
In book 2, The Dragon Prince’s Librarian, the Compact does it again. It matches the most intellectual of the princes, Rian, with a college librarian from Florida. Not only is Tania completely unprepared to be a royal, she has serious health problems. But the Compact will not be denied.
By volume 3, everyone is getting frustrated. They try to force the issue by invoking a clause that they hope will make the magic happen for the eldest son, Fask. The bride who agrees to be chosen is a dragon princess herself, from an island kingdom in the South Seas. But when she comes to Alaska for the betrothal, the Compact takes her straight to yet another of his younger brothers, yet another feckless playboy, Tray.
Tray and Leinani do their very best to keep from getting together, but the Compact, and its love magic, cannot be denied. What’s become evident by now is that the Compact’s effect on the chosen couple is a love spell, and it does wear off, but what it is is a realization of potential. It brings destined lovers together, makes them able to feel each other’s emotions, and shows them how they’ll feel once they’ve come to know each other. It’s a short cut: it eliminates the fumbly parts of a relationship, and unites two people who belong together.
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The Compact isn’t done with the princes after Tray and Leinani, either. Two more princes find their mates in the fourth and fifth volumes, but poor Fask is still single and still not king—and the renewal is coming up fast. The conventions of romance being what they are, I’m sure the forthcoming final volume will reveal Fask’s perfect mate, explain why the Compact has given Alaska multiple mated pairs instead of the usual one, and secure the renewal for another hundred years. But how we’ll get there, and what will happen in the meantime, only Elva Birch knows for sure.
There are lots of other plots and subplots in the series. There’s a dedicated and deadly enemy, an activist who is determined to eliminate dragon shifters from the world; she does her best to steal their magic, attacking them at every possible point, and abducting and torturing some of them as well. She is a very bad person, with a worldwide web of fanatical followers. There are secret agents and magical portals and elemental beings and gangs of child magic users, and time travel in a very cool vintage car.
Not a DeLorean, no. Cooler than that.
Birch does really nice, diverse characters. One of her princes is neurodivergent, and one of the chosen mates has severe ME/CFS that doesn’t get magicked away once she’s found her love. All of her hero/heroine pairs are very human (even the dragon shifters), with complex emotional lives and plenty of flaws as well as virtues. The princes are gorgeous, of course, but their brides come in all shapes and a range of sizes, and only the one who is royal herself starts off knowing how to live in this world they’ve been magicked into.
It’s a great combination of the very human and the completely fantastical. Because this is romance, the relationships take center stage; the thriller plots and the spy stories and the hostage dramas and the magical system are secondary to the love affairs. This leads to a couple of editorial decisions that make my fantasy-writing and mystery-reading reflexes go HEY! Especially in volume 5—though maybe volume 6 will fix that one. But the rest is such a grand ride that I’m sticking with it all the way to the end. I wouldn’t at all mind spending a vacation in the royal palace outside of Fairbanks, or getting to know the royal family.
After all, how can you not love a family that says to its latest princess on arrival, “Welcome to Alaska! Here’s your starter dog,” and hands her a sled-dog puppy. Who may just be a faithful companion, or he might be a powerful magical force on his own. You never know until it happens.
Judith Tarr is a lifelong horse person. She supports her habit by writing works of fantasy and science fiction as well as historical novels, many of which have been published as ebooks. She’s written a primer for writers who want to write about horses: Writing Horses: The Fine Art of Getting It Right. She lives near Tucson, Arizona with a herd of Lipizzans, a clowder of cats, and a blue-eyed dog.
