Dark Dreamers: Christine Feehan and Marjorie M. Liu

Paired with Christine Feehan’s previously released “Dark Dream” (from the anthology After Twilight), Marjorie M. Liu’s offers the next installment in the best-selling Dirk & Steele series with the novella “A Dream of Stone & Shadow.”

Kidnapped 10-year-old Sarah is trapped alone in a dank, hellish basement belonging to Andrew Kreer, and his mother. Cold, wet, and alone in the dark, Sarah suddenly finds herself comforted by the voice of a man in the dark…soothing, calm…with the promise of help. Promising he will not leave her. It is the voice of Charlie, a warm shape two shades darker than night.

Charlie is a living, breathing gargoyle. Mostly living, that is. His body is in one place, trapped by a witch’s curse. Without getting into the gory details, Charlie must die each time he wishes to wander the earth and connect with humans. It is on one of these wanderings that he discovers little Sarah, and his true gargoyle nature is sparked. The purpose of the legendary gargoyles is to help people and right now, no one needs help more that Sarah.

In spirit form, Charlie scours the world in search of someone capable of doing what he cannot, and happens upon clairvoyant Aggie Durand in the middle of catching a pair of truly evil criminals. The Dirk & Steele investigator is the perfect person to help Sarah -- strong, capable, driven. Now to convince her to do it, but how?

Aggie can’t believe what she’s seeing…or not seeing, since Charlie is merely a speaking shadow with the ability to read thoughts. She may be clairvoyant, but her knack for calculating probabilities doesn’t help much. But together with a vision of Sarah’s photo she cannot shake and Charlie’s pleas, Aggie goes on the hunt to rescue Sarah from the Kreers.

In the process, Aggie has visions of her own future…in the shadow arms of Charlie.

As with all Dirk & Steele novels, the same characters make repeat performances with added infusions of affable, heroic characters with an appropriate amount of wit and humor. Aggie and Charlie’s compassionate mission to aid Sarah is first and foremost, and the reader doesn’t get the impression that it’s all about sex and the Aggie/Charlie hookup at the end of the story (this is a paranormal romance, after all.)

The impossible, the improbable, the unbelievable and yet perfectly believable, is Liu’s forte. How the author manages to take what could be a nasty circumstance and spin it into something just the opposite makes this author an original -- and refreshing -- voice in this genre.

It will be a long, impatient wait for the next installment in the series.
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Mass Market Paperback: 384 pages
Publisher: Leisure Books (August 29, 2006)
ISBN: 0843956879
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