Review: Darkness by Eden Winters
Darkness follows Lieutenant Morrisey James.
As an Atlanta PD detective, Morrisey understands the worst atrocities the city has to offer—or believes he does. His recent cases present something new: a killer who unleashes unbridled terror in victims before moving in for the kill. Morrisey has an edge, though, the terrifying ability to gain flashes of insight from each victim.
Most people assume Farren Austin is a shallow, pretty boy, but he’s so much more. Agent Austin keeps secrets as part of the FBI’s Alternate Entities Task Force, a unit created to monitor travelers from another realm. Although they might look human, they’re anything but.
And they’ve taken a special interest in Morrisey.
Partnered with Farren, Morrisey finds himself in the middle of demons trying to possess his body, a succubus sidekick who wants to cook him breakfast, accusations of being a powerful destructive force, and a growing number of people calling him “Darkness.” Not to mention a sudden overwhelming attraction to his new partner.
It’s going to take the mysterious Farren’s help to keep the latest case from being Morrisey’s last.
I got the book from Kindle Unlimited.
Review:
Dear Eden Winters,
I have not read a long work from you in a while so when Amazon suggested this story to me, I happily grabbed it from KU. Police procedural with fantasy element and m/m romance? Sign me up.
I am glad I have read this book, I loved the main characters and enjoyed at least three or four of the secondary ones, but I had some issues with the fantasy elements of the story.
When we meet Morrisey (it took me a while to remember that Morrisey and not James is his first name) he is a disillusioned detective, who together with his partner Will had to investigate quite a few of horrific murders and as of late they noted that amount of violent, horrible crimes in the city kept increasing. The murder investigation that was assigned to them now was the murder of several women at a kids’ birthday party.
Morrisey’s life is threatened early enough in the story and that is how Farren meets him (and saves his life) and this is how Morrisey gets thrown right in the middle of strange things happening. As the blurb tells you, Alternate Task Entities monitors Travelers from another realm, some of those are very dangerous, but most are just trying to survive. I won’t tell you why these Travelers are here and how they are able to survive, but it is pretty important to the story.
I loved how Morrisey reacted to finding out that other worldly entities are present on Earth and to other strange things he got to witness and see that those things are real. He was surprised and shocked and to me it made perfect sense that writer made him continue to be surprised and shocked for quite some time (in the story time, I mean). In too many stories the characters accept paranormal/ fantasy things which they are suddenly confronted with way too fast in my opinion. I liked that Morrisey had some doubts and mistrusts and that included mistrust of his partner for a while. It felt real if that makes sense.
Both Morrisey and Farren made sense to me and I kind of admired them as dedicated law enforcement servants no matter how they both came to the service. They were very appealing characters and they had great chemistry together but that became a double edged sword. I will try to explain why.
Believe me, I came into the story with no expectations besides what the blurb promised and I have read no reviews whatsoever. I mean I knew that this writer can do a very good job so I guess I expected good writing as well, but nothing else.
So I don’t think that the fantasy element of the narrative was very convincing to me. I mean, I understood that the story was a romance and I do not even mind if the setting is not richly detailed and mostly showcases the romance, as long as the setting makes sense. Here though, to me, Morrisey was elevated to such heights with his abilities and just what he and Farren end up meaning to each other through a fantasy element was just too much for me, I think.
Also the glimpse of the world we get to see also did not make much sense. The world is dying because they killed Tenebris before? The explanation felt a little bit like mumbo jumbo to me. I mean I understood the explanation, it just made me laugh, because no, the whole world is not supposed to to die because of that, unless there are other reasons even if it is an imaginary world.
Overall I still liked the story a lot.
Grade: B
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How did I miss this? Police procedural, fantasy, mm — Thanks for the review.
Yay let me know if it worked for you :).