Rubies of Fire (Dept 57)by Lynne Connolly
Triskelion Publishing
Andreas Constant is undercover as the sleazy, office dude who hits on all the women in the CIA Department of Internal Business. He is actually vampire orphan and a field agent for Department 57, which is another department of the CIA, who are investigating a leak that apparently came from the DIB. He has been slowly getting to know everyone and entering their minds without them noticing. He has also been attracted to Roz Templeton since day one on the job and upon entering her mind he finds that she’s another vampire.
Roz has been working in the department trying to uncover leads to the two family member’s untimely and unorthodox deaths. She has been trying to stay away from the office sleaze, Andreas, but somehow finds herself drawn to him. When she discovers he’s undercover, looking for the same answers she is, she allows her passion and desire to take over. When the danger hits too close to home they find out that they might be the only ones they can count on.
Rubies of Fire is an intense, on the edge of your seat suspense with a paranormal twist. Or perhaps that would be an intense paranormal with a suspense twist. Either way, it was good. Initially, I found it a bit hard to follow all of the departments, jobs, and various Talents (which include vampires, shifters, dragons and sorcerers) but as the story settled in it started to make more sense.
I loved all of the characters in this book, most especially Fabrice Germain, the virgin sorcerer. The hero and heroine were also interesting and believable, and the heat between them seemed real. There was no doubt in my mind that they were meant to be together. There are a lot of characters and sometimes that is slightly confusing as well, most notable when editing errors use the wrong characters name at the wrong time. There were a couple of editing errors which caused a blip in my reading enjoyment, most especially when Candy states in one case that she’d known Fabrice for a long time and then only two pages later says she didn’t know him; however the plot carried me through and I was able to move beyond the errors and really get into the story.
You will need to know that there are some rather shocking elements (for the unprepared) and eyebrow raising issues in this book but they are handled well. The author tackles homoerotic issues as well as rape but not the way you would expect. In my opinion she has done a good job of creating and layering her characters and story so that these elements are believable for the plot. Other than the issues mentioned above I really enjoyed this story. Apparently this is book three in a series. I will look for the first two and I certainly hope Fabrice will come into his own story from Department 57 very soon.
I give this 4 Ayres (RORR)
Labels: Rating 4
posted by Michelle @ 5:12 p.m.
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