All her life, Helen Day has been plagued with the same disturbing dream of burning alive while a smiling man watches her burn, making no effort to help. As a result of these continuing nightmares, Helen is scared to death of fire and even more afraid of running into the smiling man. While taking her elderly friend Mabel out for a quiet meal at the local diner, Helen is shocked to see the man of her nightmares sitting just a couple tables away and knows beyond any doubt, her life will soon be over.
Drake has been in pain seemingly forever, a common condition of Theronai warrior males as they constantly draw in energies from their surroundings but without a mate, have no way of discharging it. That stored energy is not only painful, over time it becomes deadly as evidenced by the ornate tree tattoo that continues to shed leaves until a mate is found and therein lays the problem; an earlier massacre decimated their females. With a touch, Drake was pain free for the first time in memory and with it came the realization that against all odds he had found a Theronai woman. Now all he had to do was convince this obviously terrified woman that she was his while fighting a horde of Synestryn demons bent on destroying the earth.
A sound first entry into the paranormal romance genre, Butcher combines the noble warrior race protecting humanity theme with sizzling romance and private aspirations by an enigmatic healer. The honorable but doomed male needing to find his perfect mate is a common premise reminiscent of Christine Feehan’s Carpathian series. It is not clear why the Theronai bother to defend an oblivious human race to begin with, an oversight one hopes will be dealt with in future. The manly man idiom is a bit overused but despite these drawbacks, the action is steady, the characters well developed and the sexual tension sizzles. Secondary characters like the feisty Miss Mabel, tortured warrior Zach and Lexi, a terrified young woman with a secret, flesh out the story while providing direction for the series’ next installment.
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