Liquid Silver Books, $5.50, ISBN 1-59578-204-4
Fantasy Romance, 2006
Ends of the Earth, like its title suggests, sees its main characters having a close affinity to the element of earth. Our Fae heroine, Chloe Saint James, is an Elder in the Earth Sect of the Realm of Fae. She is looking for one of the three remaining missing runes that will make or break the Fae and the rest of the world as we know it, and her search takes her to southern California. Our hero, Logan Whitefeather, received a vision quest when he was teenager which tells him that it is his destiny to locate an ancient relic called the Moonstone which will bring his people, the Tecoya tribe, better tidings. The former civilian Air Force historian has been looking for the Moonstone for years. I’m sure you can predict what will happen when Logan stumbles upon Chloe during their trekking around the wilderness.
Chloe has an interesting feature: half her face has been twisted in a horrifying manner while the other half of her face is that of a very beautiful woman. However, apart from that, very little about her stands out. Likewise, Logan is a rather unusual hero in that he’s a scholar and a Native American but unlike his more stereotypical counterparts, he doesn’t act like a self-absorbed nerd or talk like a walking soapbox on reservation issues. However, this could be due to the fact that he also isn’t a particularly interesting character. Logan and Chloe have a pleasant relationship in which Ms Ramsay shows me how her two characters bond emotionally but at the same time Ms Ramsay jumps the gun a little by having her characters hop into bed too soon. As a result, the main characters and the romance are fine but at the same time they exist in some kind of grey area where they are fine but they are also rather forgettable.
It’s hard for me to define the missing ingredient in Ends of the Earth is. On one hand the characters are pretty well-drawn and the relationship has an emotional bond that works so this story is actually much better than many other erotic paranormal romances out there. That’s a plus. But at the same time it doesn’t really grab me and make me go, “Hey! This is a really great story!” It starts and ends pleasantly, making little impact on me. This one has plenty of pluses, I just wish I will remember what these pluses are one week from now.
