Reality Bypass

Book Review: Shadowlight – Lynn Viehl September 23, 2009

Hallo my darlings and welcome to another book review day on RealityByPass.   As a matter of housekeeping I’m changing the scoring on our books just a little.  The overall category we’ve been using as a buy, borrow or toss and I find it’s actually pretty hard for me to break things down that way.  Sooo…I’ll give it a paw rating between 1-5 and go from there.

Today’s selection comes from an E-ARC which I was lucky enough to get my hands on and will be available to the public on October 6th.

Ms. Viehl is a prolific author with 43 books published to date and at least a good handful coming soon.  This was the first time I’d picked up one of her books despite being an avid reader of her blog.  Now I have to look for her books at the library, since I’m not allowed to buy anything until after my birthday.  My husband says so.

Shadowlight is the first in Ms. Viehl’s Kyndred series, which takes place in the same world as her Darkyn series.  It tells the story of Jessa Bellamy, a psychical gifted young woman who died and then was reborn with even stronger skills.  Her particular power the ability to touch a person and see his or her internal shame and guilt.  It’s a double edged sword since it’s always on, and Jessa struggles with always seeing the darkest side of anyone she touches.  She takes to wearing gloves and does her best to be careful, mostly keeping her own company.  When her talents are identified by a genetics company (GenHance) with a dark goal she’s put in danger of being both kidnapped and killed.  Enter Matthias, the man with a secret past, who works with an operation focused on stopping such things and giving the gifted new identities and someplace to go.  He knows from the first time that he meets Jessa that she’s the woman for him, no matter how she fights him and tries to escape from his protective custody.  They have to learn how to work together in order to keep her from being found by the authorities, the company, or the mutated man who wants to take her apart piece by piece.

As well in this piece we get cameos by Lucan and Samantha from the Darkyn series, who are down in Savannah for Samantha’s police work and Rowan and Drew, gifted folks who are helping Matthias with his relocation program and trying to put a stop to GenHance all together.

Overall I found this an enjoyable read.  The pacing is good and the characters well thought out with few too stupid to live moments.  Jessa was so bull headed about wanting to do everything herself that it made me laugh because I know people like that.  I’m fairly sure I’ve been people like that.  She and Matthias might have been a little too perfect, but not so much that it dragged me out of the story and they are both given flaws and backstory which are charming and interesting.  That Matthias wants to be a family man also won points with me.  Rowan, the chef, was my favorite character and I’m really glad her story will be the next book in this series.

The plot is generally very good though there were a few points where I kinda felt like things happened too fast or there was a twist which the reader should have been given more information about.  I love the powers the characters have because they don’t tend to be typical.  No teleporting or flying here.  The romantic arc works well, save that I feel like Jessa goes from clubbing Matthias in the head to calling him the man he loves just a little too suddenly.  I reread the section twice to see if I’d missed something.

I liked the inclusion of the Darkyn folks as it made me curious to go look up some of those books and gave a different perspective on what was happening.  Sometimes their appearance at certain places seemed a little contrived, but also necessary to keep things rolling along.  I did like watching Samantha learn to at least begin to embrace who and what she is and I find myself curious to go back and find her story.

So all in all it was a good read and kept me flipping the virtual pages.  There is some graphic violence and a couple of graphic sex scenes which folks may want to be aware of.  I don’t think any of this was gratuitous as each scene seemed to serve a purpose either on the plot or romantic arc, but the reader should be aware.

Genre:  Paranormal Suspense Romance

Age:  Adult

Content: graphic violence, sexuality, language

Overall: 3.5 paws