Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite

In The Birds of Prey by River Davis, Cimarron “Caracara” Miramonte leads a Phoenix motorcycle club bound by blood oath and shapeshifting lineage when her mother, Cassandra “Kestrel” Miramonte, is murdered in a ritual desert ambush. As rival leaders Saachi “Scorpiana” Banerjee and Fayola “Fanuel” Acheampong maneuver to consolidate control over a relic known as Apache’s Crossbow of Immortality, Cimarron uncovers a hidden journal revealing four scattered keys tied to its power. While defending her clubhouse from coordinated attacks and exposing betrayal within her own ranks, she pursues the keys across abandoned mining towns, fortified compounds, and mesas. Each recovery intensifies the open warfare among supernatural biker factions, forcing Cimarron to balance her retaliation with a strategy as the race to claim the crossbow draws every surviving rider toward a final confrontation in the desert.

River Davis has given me the gift I did not even know I wanted in The Birds of Prey: an all-female motorcycle club! Better still, the title comes from its members' literal ability to assume a raptor form within a supernatural hierarchy. Cimarron is a brilliant club president and ready to shield her bloodline, even if she has to shoulder the danger personally. Still, it is her indispensable lieutenant, Sabre, that I found the most fascinating. She props up fire shields of her own in service of the club, and can transform fully into a sparrowhawk to coordinate from above. Davis fully fleshes out every single character, including the formidable antagonist Saachi, who shuts down any debate on how dangerous those Scorpions really are. The writing style is sharp, fast-paced, and visual in its descriptions, from a storm-lashed mesa in the Arizona badlands with carved stone and golden fungus, to a spectral highway visible only to the initiated. Readers who appreciate female supernatural action and motorcycle culture dripping in Indigenous myth... prepare to be dazzled. Very, very highly recommended.