Nocturnal Book Reviews

4.5/5
If you fancy reading a cross between Silence of The Lambs and Dean Koontz, this book is for you.

I was pleasantly surprised by Alayna WIlliams when instead of typical urban fantasy I've stumbled onto a gripping psychological thriller. I will have to hunt down the author's other books written under the pen name Laura Bickle and read them as well.

Tara is a psychic whose powers work through Taro, she belongs to a secret society Delphi's Daughters - prophets and sorceresses, and she is an ex-FBI profiler. She quit her successful career when a serial killer she was investigating cut her up and buried her in a shallow grave to saturate his flowers with her blood. Only miraculously she escaped, and is still trying to recover her piece of mind.

However when an old friend asks her to get involved into an FBI case of a missing scientist who was researching the dark matter, she can not refuse. The Delphi's Daughter think that in wrong hands his discovery will destroy the world as we know it, and they want someone on the inside to prevent it.

Damaged and fragile, Tara starts a very dangerous journey along with an FBI agent Li and a missing scientist's daughter. They are facing treachery within Delphi's Daughters and a very powerful enemy within military forces that wants to utilise the dark matter, - the odds are against them...

Tara is not easy to warm up to, but she's got the inner sense of what's right, she is very human and humanly weak, which is refreshing for UF genre.

This is a very good, evenly paced thriller. The paranormal aspect is reduced to a minimum, and instead the book concentrates on character and plot development. I also found different Taro interpretations really interesting and would love to read more. The second book, Rogue Oracle, came out last year.

Very much recommended.