"a powerful and tightly-woven adventure"
Kieran MacArthur is a War Dancer, a fierce and magical
warrior of yore with hundreds of years of blood on his
hands and loneliness in his heart to spare. When the Lady
of the Lake charges him with a task of monumental
importance to the existence of the human race and the
world it inhabits, Kieran's life is about to drastically
change. Archeologist and history professor Theresa (Tess) Shank is
having a bad day, if not a bad several months and year.
Yanked off a project after her report of an excavation is
weeks overdue, her job at the University of Mexico is in
jeopardy. To top things off, her husband has run off to
South America with a red-headed bimbo to find himself. Now
Tess faces the daunting task of pulling her life back
together and figuring out how to keep her house and her
job after said husband has absconded with all of the
couples' savings. Divorced and disillusioned, Tess spends the better part of
a day at the river feeding the ducks and dwelling on her
bleak future before deciding to go home and properly
wallow in her misery with a junk-food orgy. Her plans take
a significant turn for the worse when, curious, Tess
follows a noise and movement in the bushes where a very
large, very unconscious man lay — in a skirt no less! Initially assuming that she has stumbled upon a bum
sleeping off a drunk, Tess moves in closer to investigate
and see if she can help only to have the tables turned on
her when the strange man with the even weirder fashion
sense comes to and wrestles her to the ground beneath him. What transpires next is the beginning of a fantasy to beat
all fantasies when Tess discovers that the man she has
mistaken for an insane if sexy geek is in fact a warrior
from the past sent to retrieve the legendary sword,
Excalibur, before the Queen of Darkness, Maab, can claim
it to wreak havoc upon the mortal plane and all its
inhabitants. And Tess thought a runaway husband and losing
a job were her biggest woes. Gorgeous and virile beyond belief, Kieran is an ancient
man's man and fearless soldier over which any female from
his own time would drool. Tess is the spirited modern
woman who thinks he is a colossal chauvinist pig to whom
she wouldn't give the time of day under normal
circumstances, but the circumstances aren't normal. Tess
is also Kieran's match in every way, the only woman
capable of bringing the brave War Dancer to his knees and
drawing forth the sensitive protector buried beneath
centuries of emotional abuse and isolation. Ms. Jason has written a powerful and tightly-woven
adventure with equal measures of humor and urgency, but
above all else, SOUL SACRIFICE is a story of a love so
strong and timeless that no immortals or demons can rent
it asunder. From the first, deadly fight sequence in the Prologue when
Kieran defeats the demon Lardagh to the exciting and heart-
wrenching final battle between good and evil, Ms. Jason
grabs the reader by the throat with her evocative
descriptions, cleverly crafted prose and engaging,
universal characters that jump off the page and she
doesn't let go until the last page is turned. SOUL SACRIFICE is a must-read for fans of paranormal
romance, but especially fans of time travel and quest
fantasy, and a book I highly recommend.
Reviewed by Gracie McKeever
Posted August 4, 2007
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