Harbinger of Books

A car crash thrusts New Yorker Ashla Townsend into a desolate version of the once-bustling city. After wandering the streets alone for weeks, she discovers two men battling with swords. The survivor, Trace, is gravely wounded, and Ashla feels compelled to save him. Meanwhile Trace, an advisor and confidant to a shadow dweller chancellors, uncovered a treasonous plot that has him fighting in the alternate reality of shadowscape. When Trace learns Ashla can see and touch him shocks Trace, because Ashla is human and it should be impossible.

First let me say up front that I have not yet read the Nightwalker Series as such this is a spin off series from the Nighwalkers. I did not find this problematic there was enough information that I had no problem catching on.

On to what I liked:
In this series, Shadowdwellers, are nightwalkers that cannot tolerate any source of direct light including lamps or sun the only the light of moon and stars is tolerable to them. This was an interesting because these people actually see better in the dark with the absence of light – go figure. These walkers can exist in two dimensions realscape and shadowscape the cool thing is what happens in one dimension occurs in the other. I liked the idea that the events happening in the parallel dimension are the cause of unexplained events in the opposite dimension for example food just appears in shadowscape because it was prepared in realscape. I also enjoyed the back story of the Shadowdwellers' civil war, the consequent political intrigue and assassination attempts by a rogue contingent that wants to kill the twin regents and take power. This will be the ongoing story and is the reason I will continue with this series.

The downside:
I had a lot of trouble buying into the romance part of Ashla and Trace relationship. It seemed to me it was mostly lust. I think that the story has so much background on the Shadow dweller community and their governments then we get a lot of supporting character development – I think for future romance and of course we still have the mystery of who is the traitor. With all of this going on I think the Trace and Ashla got sacrifice a little.

I will be read the next in the series and I think I might even start her Nightwalkers sooner than later.