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Amazon.com: With just one touch, Jessa Bellamy can see anyone’s darkest secrets, thanks to whoever tampered with her genes. What she doesn’t know is that a biotech company has discovered her talent and intends to kill her and harvest her priceless DNA. Gaven Matthias is forced to abduct Jessa himself so he can protect her, but Jessa has a hard time believing the one man whose secrets she can’t read. As a monstrous assassin closes in and forces them to run, Jessa will have to find another way to discover if Matthias is her greatest ally-or her deadliest enemy.

Fans of Lynn Viehl’s Darkyn series looked forward to this launch of a new series, The Kyndred, centering on a small group of people who acquired special abilities after they “died.” Neither human nor vampire, these Kyndred were created by genetic manipulation done while they were children in the 1980s. Targeting orphans, each one has a different ability, just like the Darkyn do. Evil bio-tech firm GenHance is trying to round up these orphans now that they’re grown, to extract their special DNA and make all kinds of special potions out of it. Shadowlight is the first book in this new series, and it doesn’t disappoint.

I love the Darkyn books, and was glad to see some of the characters from that series appear in this new one. My favorite, snarky Dr. Alex, makes an appearance, while crime-fighting Samantha and her drool-worthy partner Lucan are here hunting down a bad guy. If there are to be no more Darkyn books, I hope that this series will keep us updated on what the vamps are doing by giving them secondary roles in Kyndred. Since Dr. Alex is also hunting for the Kyndred because of their mysterious connection to the Darkyn, it looks as though I’ll get my wish.

There are essentially two story tracks here. One is the story of the hero and heroine of the book, while the other is an over-arching story of the Kyndred themselves. Not all of the questions about the Kyndred were answered here, and I look forward to learning more about them and their role in future books. The hero and heroine, uber-licious Gaven Matthias and Jessa Bellamy, are the lead-off couple for the series and I hope Ms. Viehl carries them forward into future books like she did with Alex and Michael in the Darkyn books. There were too many questions about Matthias (no one uses his first name) and his history and role that I want answered! Like: if GenHance created the Darkyn in the 1980s, how come he goes back a couple of thousand years to Roman times? Who created him? At one point he calls Jessa “Jezebel,” but this never gets explained. My frustration is why I didn’t give this book 5 stars – I wanted to know all about him!

As an orphan, Jessa was experimented on by scientists at GenHance. She was adopted and raised by a loving man, who left her well off when he died. Unfortunately, she was killed in a workplace shooting that also took her fiance… and when she “woke up” she had the ability to touch people and know their deepest and darkest thoughts. She re-named herself and started a company that screened prospective employees for businesses, and was doing very well. However, now GenHance wants to recover all of the orphans it tampered with, and they’ve tracked Jessa down.

Matthias is also seeking the orphans in order to save them from GenHance. It’s a race to see who can snatch them first, Matthias or the bad guys. Just as Jessa is about to be grabbed by GenHance, Matthias comes to the rescue. He takes her to a secret underground compound, but Jessa isn’t sure she’s really up for this. He needs to convince her of his good intentions and enlist her aid in rescuing other orphans.

I would kill for my own Gaven Matthias. Seriously. Not only does he have the perfect manly bod and gorgeous face, but he’s the kinder, gentler Alpha that sets me a-flutter. No domineering jerk here! Just quiet strength, honor, integrity, and a whole lot of lonely-boy that made me want to kick Jessa to the curb and jump on him. Yum!

Ms. Viehl writes an intelligent tale about well-developed characters that don’t follow the cookie-cutter mold. I like how the women don’t automatically fall in with the guys’ plans. In the Darkyn series, Dr. Alex is STILL struggling with her conversion to vamp-hood (as is Samantha) even though she loves her fangy mate. In Shadowlight, Jessa has a hard time believing Matthias’ story about a vampire race, although I thought she took the whole deal about losing her company and her livelihood with unexpected ease. If character development continues into future books, then we may  see some angst developing. I hope so, because otherwise Jessa’s character is more jello-y than I like to see. The next book, Dreamveil, will be out in May 2010, and I’m really looking forward to it!

Everyone likes saving money, and those of us who loves books and music are always looking for a good deal. For the entire month of February, Alibris is offering discount coupons!! The more you spend, the more you save. And you can get even more bang for your buck when you buy USED books and music!

Here’s the deal:

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I just wrote a review of Noah Boyd’s wonderful debut novel, The Bricklayer, and you can read it here on the LibraryThing site. It’s the kind of book that would appeal to those who don’t particularly care for thrillers, because it delivers great characters in protagonist Steve Vail and his maybe-love-interest Kate Bannon. The heroes in thrillers can be very wooden and uninteresting, but Boyd does a nice job in introducing Vail, and I’m looking forward to reading the next book in the series!

Available on January 26, and you can pre-order now.

As I was browsing Ilona Andrews’ website the other day, I stumbled on a post that contained a snippet of an unpublished work. No title except the tag ‘Alpha Menz’, very rough, not complete,  it was one of those pieces that made me go “what the hell?” as I read it. Several other snippets had been posted early in 2009, which I hadn’t read yet, but what I’d read sent me scrambling to find the other posts.

This was something cooked up to deal with a little brain-fry caused by working long hours on one of their published books, and all I can say is “wow, this deserves to be published!” I have to warn you, as is posted on their site, this is a dark piece with disturbing themes. A young mother and her little girl get kidnapped by … well, it’s hard to tell WHAT they are. But they’re not nice. At all. They terrify the mother and daughter, and they don’t care. Oooooo. I love dark fiction, and this is pretty dark.  Read the warnings posted with each piece, and proceed accordingly.

This is the order the pieces should be read in. It’s a little confusing on their site, but just follow this order and ignore the titles of the posts because they’re a bit misleading. And if you want to see more, be sure to drop a comment saying so. Enjoy!

1. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/03/06/opening-chapter-of-alpha-menz/
2. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/03/07/alpha-men-final/
3. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/11/23/okay/
4. http://www.ilona-andrews.com/2009/11/23/alpha-menz-snippet-part-2/