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Valerie Winn steps through the Worldgate expecting to find her contact waiting for her. Instead, she gets herself into an ambush of sorts. This is her first mission, and though she’s been trained as a field agent, it really isn’t turning out to be what she expected.
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After her contact does arrive, she finds that he is none other than the notorious Raven. Even as a green agent, she doesn’t understand why TAU command hadn’t seen fit to let her know she’d be working with one of the undead.
Raven is a thiefcatcher – at least that’s what people on his current work think, anyway. He’s also a vampire, a war hero and an undercover agent. When he sees young Val is the TAU agent he’s supposed to meet, he knows he’s in for trouble. The young agent is dead-set on following the rules, and rules are something that Raven just really has no use for. Not only that, but the unexpected attraction she stirs up is something he hasn’t felt in a long, long time.
Involved in a quest for a mysterious artifact, Raven and Val must work together, fighting their unlikely attraction to each other while trying to uncover the mystery that shrouds the appearance of weapons that don’t belong on the current world.
SWORD AND SHADOW by Saje Williams is the latest Seron Serial to be released from Inara Press. As with previous serials, just when the story started to get interesting, Season One ends and readers are left waiting to find out what will happen next. What is in the ship they’ve found in the middle of a frozen wasteland? Will Val and Raven form a more permanent attachment? What powers does the artifact hold?
Author Saje Williams has done a creditable job creating an interesting world where vampires and mages roam pseudo Earths together, and where magic is commonplace. Intricate details of a fictional society give the story depth and interest, while the complex characters draw readers deeper into the story.
However, unless you are an adolescent, or have an unsavory predilection for fifteen-year-old boys, it is hard to image the hero as sexy, although the author describes him thus several times. You see, Raven was “turned” when he was fifteen, so his outward appearance is just that – a fifteen-year-old boy. Chronologically, he’s much older than fifteen - since he’s been dead such a long time - and his inner character is much more evolved. As a reader, it is hard to reconcile the hero’s outward appearance with his inner character and still come up with anything desirable.
Since this is a serial, it is also hard to say whether the whole story is worth reading or not. Season One was certainly interesting enough for readers to want to find out what happens next. However, will we even remember we cared when the next season appears?
Reviewed by Janean Nusz
for The Road to Romance
April 14, 2006
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