#34 Awaken Me Darkly (Alien Huntress, Book 1) by Gena Showalter

My Rating: 9 out of 10 stars

Mia Snow is an agent for A.I.R. (Alien Investigation and Removal). She's been hunting aliens her entire life, and hated them ever since she was a little girl and they had killed at least one of her brothers, the other gone missing and never found.

Now she's on the hunt for an Arcadian that's killing human men and leaving them to be found in compromising positions. But if she's to find who's behind these murders, and save her partner in the process, she must accept help from the most unlikely of sources: a tall, exotic Arcadian by the name of Kyrin en Arr. And as she gets closer to the truth, and closer to Kyrin, she discovers some shocking secrets about herself in the process.

I went into this book not sure what to expect. I was thinking I might just be getting another romance in a paranormal wrapper, but I couldn't be further from the truth. :-) I totally enjoyed Gena's writing style, and Mia's kick ass character reminded me of the Anita Blake of old. This book would probably be considered more Paranormal Fantasy, or even Sci Fi because of the Aliens, though some of the powers they exhibit are very similar to what we see in Vampires in other stories: strength, quick moving, mind control, enhanced life, etc.

After finishing this story, I immediately added the rest of the series to my wishlist. There's currently one other published, Enslave Me Sweetly, with the next two coming in June and July 2007 actually being YA, and a return to the non-teen version in January 2008. I believe the YA books, going by the series title "Teen Alien Huntress", will take place in the same world but with different characters. (I added the forthcoming titles and release dates to the Ongoing Releases Dates thread at BookObsessed if you want all the details.)

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