2008 romance/SF/mystery; fifth of its series but effectively
stand-alone. Sierra McIntyre may be working for a trashy tabloid, but
she's still going after the big corruption story. But when she goes to
interview the new Guild boss about his recently-dead predecessor,
sparks fly…
Yeah, I remember when trashy tabloids were fun. All right, there
are three new psychic powers (psychic light from the "dark end of the
spectrum" which honestly I found too funny to be annoyed by,
ultra-violet psychic light which nonetheless everyone can see, and
psychic intuition) but I'm here for the people more than for the
gimmicks, and the people did convince. Both of them have got into
defensive habits; but both of them are prepared to see that this
person is someone who's going to be more than an investigative partner
or a friend, and so they can attempt to transcend those habits.
I'm still somewhat thrown by the marriage system on this cut-off
colony world. When the world was suddenly isolated from Earth the
ruling powers wanted stability, so they set up two sorts of marriage,
Covenant Marriage which it's very hard to get out of and Marriage of
Convenience which is a short-term partnership with no legal binding
(but if there are any children it automatically upgrades to Covenant
Marriage). And, well, what's the advantage of the MoC? It doesn't seem
to offer any benefits over simply shacking up; you have to register
the partnership, you have to agree to be exclusive, and in return…
well, nothing. In this book, where the point of the MoC (which our
hero proposes to Sierra during their first meeting, because sparks
etc.) is that he can conveniently extend his Guild status to give her
a bit of protection, it's very clearly only there for the benefit of
the plot (and so that we can have a "they're quicky-married, and now
they're falling in love" plot, though I'm very glad to say that nobody
makes any assumptions about sleeping together). Is there some legal
penalty for couples sleeping together without an MoC? How would it
be enforced?
Of course, Castle/Krentz's romance-writer bias shows: every book in
the series to date has ended with the couple getting into a Covenant
Marriage and they're clearly going to be happy ever after. Which is
fine in Romancelandia, but I can't help but think of the vast benefits
to women in particular that came from readily available divorce in the
real world.
Apart from that, we have an Obvious Villain who's dealt with in a
fairly straightforward manner, and a less obvious one who's a bit more
subtle, and the obligatory dust bunny (this one is called, and acts
like, Elvis). These are definitely light books but they aren't
pretending to be anything else, and I continue to enjoy them.