Rising Darkness

Game of Shadows, Book 1

By: Thea Harrison

Narrated by: Sophie Eastlake

Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

In the hospital ER where she works, Mary is used to chaos. But lately, every aspect of her life seems adrift. She's feeling disconnected from herself. Voices appear in her head. And the vivid, disturbing dreams she's had all her life are becoming more intense. Then she meets Michael. He's handsome, enigmatic, and knows more than he can say. In his company, she slowly remembers the truth about herself.

Thousands of years ago, there were eight of them. The one called the Deceiver came to destroy the world, and the other seven followed to stop him. Reincarnated over and over, they carry on - and Mary finds herself drawn into the battle once again. And the more she learns, the more she realizes that Michael will go to any lengths to destroy the Deceiver.

Then she remembers who killed her during her last life, nine hundred years ago...Michael.

©2013 Teddy Harrison (P)2013 Tantor

Pleasant surprise!

I recently completed The Elder Race Series by Thea Harrison Which prompted me to go onto this series. I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as The Elder Race one, but was totally delighted to fine it is just as good for a paranormal romance! I love Thea’s books and I hope that this series continues like her previous one did. Enjoy!

Just ok

A slow start accelerated only to a moderate pace. Interesting elements of alien past lives, sacrifice, good vs evil, astral projection and psychic realm, but the author turns it into a weak love story. I won’t read the sequel.

drags at points

I wanted to live this book because I like the concept but the book dragged at points and I didn't become fully vested in the characters. may get the second in the series a chance but unsure.

Slow, slow, slow

not til about 3/4 through that I felt character development took off so that I cared about the protagonists and story. A new series, but I felt that much of the early parts of the book could’ve either been more interesting, more engaging, or left out altogether. Nothing made me care about each character’s fore story in the absence of any plot reason given to motivate or integrate the plot. When it finally fell together, it was up to the author’s usual caliber.

3.5 STARS A COMPLICATED SCI-FI THRILLER

Firstly, nothing like Elder Races - this is a cleverly written but dark alien story about 7 cosmic beings coming to Earth after one of their evil criminals named The Deceiver, escaped and it is their jobs to catch him. They each had to take a potion to allow their bodies to go through Earth's atmosphere but unfortunately, there was a terrible side effect - once they landed and were reincarnated into a family/culture none of them remembered each other or their mission. However, they are each constantly bombarded with thoughts and memories of past lives spanning thousands of years which tortures their minds and souls and sometimes they meet but it was always too late - until now.

This is the story of Mary and Michael who were soul-mates on their planet and have found each other again but The Deceiver, who sucks souls and possesses bodies together with all his soulless minions, his magic and all his memories from thousands of years on Earth still intact (he didn't take the potion), is hot on world domination and is therefore on their trail with disastrous consequences.

It was hard going to begin with as there was a lot of well written but 'wordy' character and world building to be done and, to be honest, it kinda lost me in parts and I ended up not caring much. However by part 2 things got more straightforward and once they found each other the pair had to rebuild trust, run, fight and there were a few emotional scenes along with a few sexual encounters but these were mildly described.

Worth a credit? This is a hard one because I am sure there will be plenty of you out there loving the sound of this and will thoroughly enjoy it - but unfortunately, for me, I probably won't follow the series as I found it centred too much on the evil deeds, depressing, dark side of PNR.

confusing

I think I was somewhere in the 20th Orso chapter before this book quit being confusing. I lost interest very quickly in this book but since I have paid for it I wanted to do my best to finish it I skipped a lot of it. save your money by something better this lady is awesome writer with a big imagination. a lot of her books are too short this one was long enough and you got your money's worth that way but maybe if it held my attention enough for me to unravel it it would have been a good book

I liked it although It was not as good the elder

I love Thea Harrison's books but was not as wowed as I was with the elder races series.

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Too many metaphors.

It was a good short story but there were so many metaphors there were times I lost track of where she was in the story. I also found the narrator to be too slow and "flowery" of a tempo. Not really sure if I liked it or not. So this one gets a "eh... It was ok" rating from me.

Looking for more

I enjoy Thea immensely. Can't wait to see what Mary and Michael accomplish. I hope Nicholas will be back.