I’ve enjoyed a few of Keri Arthur‘s books, but in all honesty have yet to read her two most popular series – Riley Jensen or its successor Dark Angels. I was quite happy to see that Dell is republishing her earlier series and that the publisher shared book four, Kiss the Night Goodbye, in Arthur’s Nikki and Michael series with me for review.
As you know, I do like to read series in order, however I wasn’t able to do so with the Nikki and Michael, but I did get a sense of the characters from the first chapters. I’ll be frank though, it would be much better I think to read these sequentially, so I’d recommend purchasing the entire series (Dancing With the Devil, Hearts in Darkness, Chasing the Shadows, Kiss the Night Goodbye).
As the book opens we find out that Nikki is a kick-ass psychic private eye and her partner (and soon-to-be husband) Michael is a very old vampire. Michael is an operative with a psychic/paranormal organization called the Damask Circle and Nikki wants to join him. Thus in the first chapter she’s undergoing a series of physical tests (actually attacks she has to ward off) and we learn that in earlier books she’s gained the use of fire as a weapon and is strongly psychically linked with Michael.
When they’re called out on a job after finding out that a traitor tried to use the test to kill Nikki, all of a sudden Michael is kidnapped. Nikki can track him and is sent rescue him from his captor, the brother of the murderer of his former love interest 100 years ago. I won’t go into details, but found the action fairly fast-paced and interesting. I was sorry not to know more background from the earlier stories, which I feel would have informed the read.
I enjoyed the story and found its premise intriguing, but wasn’t as strongly connected with it as the other books I read by Arthur (Ripple Creek Werewolves: Beneath a Rising Moon and Beneath a Darkening Moon; Myth & Magick: Destiny Kills and Destiny Burns). I do look forward to the first two Damask Circle books of the trilogy that I received recently to review as they should provide some background for Kiss the Night Goodbye (which I then may re-read).
If I were Dell and Arthur, I think I would have tried to republish the books in order (i.e. Damask Circle first and then Nikki and Michael), but you can and should invest in digital copies of these books as Arthur is a first class paranormal writer and set the stage for many who followed with her inventive tales.
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From the Publisher
Nikki and Michael Book 4
Kiss the Night Goodbye by Keri Arthur
Random House Publishing Group – Bantam Dell
Dell
ISBN 9780440246541
Price $7.99
THE PRICE OF LOVE
Nikki James is just an ordinary, risk-taking, psychically inclined private eye until she hooks up with Michael Kelly. Now she is something more: one of the few, the chosen, the magic-wielding undercover operatives of the Damask Circle, an organization protecting humanity from a rising tide of evil. She wants nothing more than to pass the Circle’s strict entry exams so she can get on with the business of planning her wedding to Michael. But she quickly realizes that buying a wedding dress is the least of her worries.
One hundred years ago, Michael Kelly hunted down and killed the sorcerer responsible for murdering his lover. Now the brother of that man is out for revenge, and he intends to destroy all that Michael holds dear in the process. When Michael is kidnapped, the trail leads Nikki to a dusty ghost town surrounded by a potent magical barrier, leaving her to battle a madman alone with only her wits, strength, and the one psychic gift she cannot fully control. And to make matters even worse, Michael no longer seems to remember who she is.
