Review: If it had only been a few hundred pages longer!
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 09 17, 2011
I'll begin by the worst fault of the book - the absolutely heinous, most maddening, unpardonable of all its flaws - it's too short.The premise is set beautifully. The first 25% of my ebook takes me from a war torn world, where existence is a punishment to be endured in service of a cause beyond your understanding and with loyalty to an unfeeling corporation trapped in an unending battle began and run by greed, to a planet where every colour is bursting with life and touch, scent and taste are allowed to bring forth the best and the worst of your emotions.Claire Shannon leaves her dreary, apparently inescapable life in Uley and arrives in Rada, in the flower province of Dahlia.If you've read the first Kinsmen novella, Silent Blade, then you know about this province. You know the wealth and power the gifted Kinsmen wield and their constant battle for supremacy tempered by tradition, protocol, customs and alliances.Here Claire arrives as a refugee after enduring a painful scan by the immigration officers that could unveil her secret- that she was a trained psycher in Uley and that she can kill with her mind. She passes the test and her brain is declared inert. She is given a job recommendation and arrives at Guardian Inc. for her first interview. Here she meets the head of the Escana Kinsmen family, Venturo Escana, who looks at her drab clothing, chemical stained hair and hires her out of pity. She becomes an Admin in his office. She leaves Guardian Inc. that first day her mind reeling from the beauty of the Adonis who had stood in front of her and the startling brightness of his powerful mind, and coming to grips with her chagrin at being pitied by some one as magnificent as him.And so the preview ended. I was almost panting for what came next. The authors were ridiculously good with the details and made sure I appreciated her position perfectly. They described both her home planet and the new one that she was coming to love with vivid strokes from a mixed pallet.This could have gone in so many ways, and while I stewed over what can happen next for two weeks (till the book came out), I knew I could safely leave the story in the hands of two of my favourite authors. My imagination frankly couldn't come up with anything remotely satisfactory.The best part is that they skimmed over EVERYTHING I would have wanted them to go into.The worst part is that they SKIMMED over everything I would have wanted them to go into.There was the office romance, there was the fight between Claire and Venturo in their psycher forms (inside the bionet), and there was the final 'F U' to the bad guys when her truth came out and the two ganged up to teach the idiots a lesson, there was even a little disapproval from a family member to keep the plot well rounded - but dammit, why did they have to make it so short? It seems such a waste of a wonderful plot-line filled with so much...potential!I can't get over that. I'm going back to my kindle app to read it again. Maybe I'll feel less emotional about it tomorrow. Probably not.VERDICT: Loved it.