Samhain Publishing, $2.50, ISBN 1-59998-702-3
Sci-fi Romance, 2007

Oh no, some nosy humans have landed on a planet called Solarion. The leader is Jonah Cash and he leads a bunch of folks on a mission to determine whether this planet is suitable for their people on Cimirion to migrate to. Cimirion is fast turning into the new Pluto, you see, and it’s mass emigration or being turned into ice blocks. Jonah is not happy to have a psychic Visionary along for the mission, but before you know it, he and Kara Zaire are already way ahead of the others when it comes to the housewarming party.

Solarion Heat is a futuristic romance that follows the tried-and-true formula with absolute fidelity. The hero is this gung-ho action hero. The heroine is psychic and full of woo-woo, hoping to “speak” to the planet that the crew have landed on. Oh, I’m sure the planet has plenty to say about crazy psychic loons. She will also find herself hurt so that the hero can puff up with bloated manliness and forsake his initial impression of her uselessness – which, in this story, turns out to be right – so that he can get horny over their inevitable physical contact. In other words, the main characters remain tried and true to gender stereotypes.

The good thing about this story is that the author doesn’t have silly magic sex taking place in this story. In fact, the story doesn’t get sidetracked by sex scenes after sex scenes – Ms Scott clearly wants to tell a story instead of just presenting a mishmash of sex scenes. Plus, the sex scenes aren’t campy, which are nice. However, with the characters behaving very predictably with respect to their assigned gender roles in this story, right down to Kara getting too close to or into danger every time the author needs the hero and the heroine to have some kind of excuse to fall into a clinch, this story ends up being more predictable than it should be.

Therefore, despite the author’s best intentions, Solarion Heat is readable, but unfortunately also not too memorable.