nichtszusagen

• ***** "Dragon Dance" by Angela Knight
  Police Sergeant Arial Dean, the department's top hostage negotiator, is working a domestic hostage situation when it suddenly gets much worse: the perpetrator turns out to be a new Hyper, and they have to call in and FBI Hyper called Tracker to deal with him. Hypers are people infected with... something.... that gives them one of a variety of supernatural powers. When they first become Hypers, they're extremely violent until they learn to control their powers.
  
  Tracker is able to subdue the man, but in the struggle, Arial becomes infected herself, and Tracker spirits her away to help her through the initial phases. Only to find that there's a Hyper out there controlling other Hypers and Tracker is a major target.
  
  This is a new world for Angela Knight, and I hope she sets more stories in it. There's a great balance between interesting worldbuilding, the emotional dilemma of a woman finding her life irrevocably changed, an incredibly steamy romance as Arial and Tracker discover each other, and the excitement of finding and fighting a supervillain. And if that's not enough, there's a wonderful twist at the end.
  
  
• ****½ "Caught by the Tides" by Diane Whiteside
  Emma Sinclair is a young widow who rescues the shipwrecked Owen Bentham, a King's Mage on a mission to return to England with the counter to a spell that Napoleon's mages can use to invade. Emma nurses him back to health using magic spells. She'd learned the spells years ago, but they'd never worked well. Now, however, they're working fine.
  
  Turns out Emma is a Chalice--someone who amplifies a mage's power. Now Emma has to deal with her newfound power, her growing feelings for Owen, and the fact that her neighbor reveals himself to be an enemy mage who wants to kill Owen and use her as his Chalice. For his part, Owen is torn between protecting Emma and completing his mission.
  
  Another new world here--the time of Napoleon, with magic. And again, it's well-developed and interesting. I could have used a little more romance between Emma and Owen, but it's still a wonderful story as is.
  
  
• ****½ "Queen of All She Surveys" by Emma Holly
  In the ongoing war between King Ravna and Queen Tou, the queen's army has won a major battle. So King Ravna sends his son Prince Memnon in exchange for the soldiers who'd been taken captive.
  
  Memnon discovers that Queen Tou isn't quite what he'd expected, and that his father had betrayed him. The story is complicated by taking place in the Yama universe, and both Memnon and Tou have virtually inexhaustible sexual needs--she keeps a plethora of men to keep herself barely satisfied, while Memnon has developed incredible control.
  
  Between the steam and the political intrigue, this was definitely a story I didn't want to put down.
  
  
• ***½ "In a Wolf's Embrace" by Lora Leigh
  Matthias Slaughter is a Wolf Breed and an assassin. He's been sent to kill one of the evil scientists who'd created and tortured the Breeds. And he does. The only problem is that there's a witness: Grace Anderson. Matthias should eliminate her, too, as a liability, but the problem with that is that he's recognized her as his mate.
  
  It was an entertaining story, and I liked the premise, but Grace got on my nerves. Too much "I love him but he killed someone so I have to turn him in." Even after explanations. And unfortunately, a lot of Matthias's arguments take the form of "come on, you know you want me," as if sexual desire is the same as a logical argument.
  

Labels: 3.5 stars, 4.5 stars, 5 stars, books, ParanormalRomance

// posted by Darla @ 5/27/2008 10:05:00 AM