Samhain Publishing, $3.50, ISBN 978-1-60504-397-5
Paranormal Romance, 2009
Poor Chase Calder. Our photographer hero is doing his thing in the Nevada Desert where he is caught in a freak electrical storm. He wakes up, well, not in a Strange New World but rather in some kind of military facility, bound and treated as if he’s a mutant in an X-Men movie. What is going on here? Had the storm turned him into… something not so human? Meanwhile, his only ally may be Dr Martina Sanchez, who is actually working undercover – she too has her own agenda.
This is a most entertaining brief excursion into paranormal action/romance drama. The characters aren’t that well drawn, but then again, the plot drives the story as much as the drama, and I feel that there is a very nice balance of both. I especially love the way the author ends the story – it’s just perfect, without being too sentimental and certainly without the author trying too hard to insist that these two characters are getting married and having babies right away. Sure, there are woo-woo stuff in this story, but the author’s approach to the characters’ problems and the way these two handle those problems make this story a realistic kind of paranormal romance.
Strange New World, I feel, is the perfect nibble-sized read in between action-driven romantic urban fantasy romances by authors like Marjorie M Liu.
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