The Tiger and the Wolf

I recently finished Adrian Tchaikovsky's The Tiger And The Wolf. It's the first of a fantasy series involving shapeshifters and it follows two different threads throughout the book - one of a girl who has a Wolf father and a Tiger mother, the other about a hero who has come north for support for the man he wants to become ruler. It's pretty good overall and the end is quite well chosen. However, having previously read Guns of the Dawn by the same author, I felt it was - comparatively - a bit slow moving and not quite as readable.