Silver Publishing, $3.99, ISBN 978-1-920468-27-9
Fantasy Romance, 2010
Oh, how cute. Remember the good old days before the urban fantasy glut, when paranormal romances always revolves around alien guys chasing after human women for procreation purposes? To Kiss a Demon is one of those cute antiquated dinosaur tales dressed up as an urban fantasy romp, how adorable.
In a place called “inworld”, we have demons who, thanks to plague and war, are now numbering in “a handful”. They may be just a “handful”, but they can still form clans and… let me check again… “demiclans”, ah yes. Maybe we are talking about a big handful here. Naturally, there are more guys than women to go around. There are good demons – our blue-skinned Zironet hero Barak is an example – and there are evil demons, those with black skin. Ms Oiler clearly isn’t aware of the unfortunate implications of her central casting of dark-skinned folks as evil and implicating all evils committed in inworld on these dark-skinned demons. The Na’vis are good people! Death to the Darkies!
Oh, where was I? Oh yes, after the evil humans destroyed the Na’vis and caused the number of women to dwindle… wait, wrong story. But the plot is the same, pretty much, and now the Na’vi demons need women. Barak’s plan is to go up to Earth and find a billion-dollar blockbuster romance with an Earth woman who will bear him many, many babies. These women must bear “the mark of the Zi” because we need our heroines to be special. Look at the Zi! Zi is zee best!
Katrina Rush, our heroine, is the woman destined to be Barak’s “Zi-mate”. Yes, that’s the word coined by Ms Oiler. I’m not making this up, I swear. She is a special task officer on the trail of an arms dealer. Her introduction into this story sees her charging out of the shadows to confront the arms dealer, expecting her team to show up behind her to back her up just like in those movies, but alas, she learns too late that she’s on her own. Her team mates are in Malcolm Forest’s pockets so she has walked straight into a trap.
Luckily for her, Barak had caught her “scent” earlier that day and is trailing her ever since. Boy, aren’t we glad that Kat didn’t change her underwear for two days now, eh? He comes to her rescue, of course. Now, it’s time for some hot Zi-mating!
As some kind of Na’vi-meets-Lora Leigh crossover comedy that is meant to be read aloud in a bad German accent, To Kiss a Demon has plenty of unintentional humor to be had at the author’s expense. But as a romantic paranormal fantasy, well… let’s look at the bright side. At least Ms Oiler makes me laugh as she scrapes all the way down to the bottom of the barrel.
