I'm a fan of this author's Game series, and do read, but do not buy, her Dark series. I'd been waiting for this book for so long, I did wonder if I'd built up my expectations too high when I found that rather than reading obsessively, I kept putting it down and coming back to it, but I really struggled with this one.
The tale seems to take place over only a couple/few days, and starts with Mack and his team infiltrating a warehouse looking for arms, but they come across safeguards and computers in another warehouse, where they find fellow Ghostwalker and Mack's ex-lover Jaimie.
At 444 pages long, this is one of the longer novels in the series, so I sat down with great expectations of a good tale, heat and romance between the leads and an Alpha-male that would add to the series, but I feel vaguely disappointed. Yes, the tale was full of hunks - Mack, Javier, Kane, Gideon and Joe, but Joe, an outsider (and not known to be a Ghostwalker til some time into the novel) seemed more interesting than Mack and I found myself distracted pretty much from the start when Kane mentioned that he had gotten a female Ghostwalker pregant when trying to rescue her (cue next lead and book?) and was looking for her, and at one point, the author made it seem as if he might not be what he seemed, so he became the more interesting one for me. I mean, Mack seems to make an issue of Joe being 'over six foot', but there's no mention of Mack's height, physical features or build (though we know from previous books that the Ghostwalkers are kind of like super-soldiers), and all we know about Jaimie is that she is petite with dark locks.
The story seemed overburdened with computer-speak, though with Jaimie being a super-programmer, one couldn't expect it to be anything other orientated, but I found myself becoming bored with hacking into systems, finding backdoors, finding trojans, breaking encryptions....yawn. On top, Mack hadn't seen her since she left him 2 years before, after he failed to make the right responses when she mentioned pregnancy and family, yet he expects to pick up right where they left off, and objects to her having beer in her fridge (and goes a bit mental when he finds out that it is for Joe, her friend, an unknown quantity).
Violet makes another appearance in yet another Ghostwalkers novel, and I did wonder if this was just a bit of a red herring to liven up a rather boring and mundane tale, but it does open the series up for another book...or ten.
Regrettably, I feel that this series is going the way of the Dark series i.e. mundane, repetitive stuff than I will read out of vague interest and loyalty to the author, if someone lends me the latest book, or if I find a copy at my library, but not one that I will look to buy again. It is an ok-ish read in the overall context of the series, but not a great book and certainly not one that I could see myself reading again and again (I've re-read all of the existing books).
If a reader picks this book up right where it starts, the lack of knowledge of the series will cause a lot of confusion, so it does need to be read in book order, so my take would be to read and enjoy the others first - and then perhaps allow this one a little leeway, in the hopes that Kane's book provides the excitement, passion, hot, descriptive sex and intrigue that is missing in this one...and that has been present in all of the other books to date.
