Awaken Me Darkly Gena Showalter

Awaken Me Darkly

First Published 2005
336 Pages

ISBN: 074349749X
Reviewer
Leola
July 2005

The writer has done herself proud with this book. What if our world had followed an alternate history? What if Aliens walked among us? Who would police these extraterrestrials? Well Gena Showalter has developed a very entertaining world with just those parameters.

Mia Snow is a self proclaimed kick ass alien huntress heading an expert unit belonging to an organization called the A.I.R( Alien Investigation and Removal) a department of the New Chicago Police Department. The opening case is a doozy, a nude male found posed in an erotic manner, the first body found of several missing men matching the same physical description. It's an alien kill, but which species? Mia Snow has a record of always getting her alien, of having "gut" feelings about things that other agents aren't always aware of.

With her partner Dallas, she sets out to find the Alien responsible for the missing men and now the body. After tracking and taking in several suspects, Dallas clings to live precariously after being mortally wounded saving Mia's life. Murder suspect, Kyrin en Arr, a deadly Arcadian, whose sister is being held as a suspect, arrives at Dallas' hospital bed with an offer for Mia; release his sister and he will save Dallas' life. In an attempt to convince Mia he can indeed do this, he gives Dallas blood and immediately the prognosis goes from "at death's door" to "stable and improving". While this is enough proof for Mia that he can indeed save Dallas's life, she can not reconcile freeing a prime murder suspect even to save her best friend and partner's life. With her temper rising she tries to use her formidable fighting skills to force Kyrin to concede and heal Dallas, all she attains is a stand off , the realization of her growing attraction to Kyrin and that he refrained from hurting her in their fight even though he could easily have.

Mia has lots of questions but few answers and she is running out of time to save Dallas' life. Actions indicate she can trust Kyrin, but it goes against everything she has believed all her life to trust an alien, and a suspect at that. There is something more happening here, something that Kyrin knows and is not telling her. With the attraction going nova between Kyrin and Mia, and the stakes increasing with Kyrin's revelations, Mia's world is about to be upended. Knowing what she knows now, will she be able to apprehend the real killer? She will have to trust that two opposing factions can indeed come together and fight for the greater good.

This is a wonderful story, rich with both character and passion. Gena Showalter has written a winner here and I sincerely hope she writes a sequel.