Awaken Me Darkly

Awaken Me Darkly by Gena Showalter was one of the books I picked up for free at RWA in Reno. It was a fairly decent read, up until the Aaron Spelling ending.

Mia Snow lives and works as an alien hunter in New Chicago, sometime in the future. The world-building here is incredibly light so a lot of these details are non-existent. For instance people don't shower with water anymore and chocolate is a rare delicacy. But since I'm not a stickler for heavy duty world-building this didn't bother me too much. You science fiction/fantasy fans might start grinding your teeth though.

Aliens live among us on Earth. Some of them are okey-dokey. Others are not so cool. The alien hunters are sort of like bounty hunters in the Wild West. They can bring in suspects dead or alive. Pretty much shoot first, ask questions later.

Someone is kidnapping and killing men. Mia finds alien hair at one of the crime scenes and latches on to Lilla En Arr, who didn't kill anybody but definitely knows something. Then Mia's partner is mortally wounded and the only one who can save him is Lilla's sexy brother, Kyrin. In exchange, Kyrin wants Mia to free his sister. Also, Kyrin seems to be tangled up in the mess with the missing and dead men.

This book works for a while because I liked Mia. Talk about a major bitch! I'm sure some readers will be turned off, but frankly after overdosing on goody-two-shoes romance heroines, Mia is the perfect antidote.

Unfortunately the author leads her character into an ending that just doesn't worth. Hokey is the word that immediately jumped to mind. Also, there are major loose ends here. Honestly, when did authors decide that loose ends were "ok" as long as the book was part of a series? This seems a rather new development with me, and several of my favorite authors (mystery writers included) have left sloppy endings in their most recent work.

You can tie everything up reasonably well and still mine it for future material in another story. Honest.

All in all, an average read.