Thea Harrison - Rising Darkness

In the hospital ER where she works, Mary is used to chaos. But lately, every aspect of her life seems adrift. She’s feeling disconnected from herself. Voices appear in her head. And the vivid, disturbing dreams she’s had all her life are becoming more intense. Then she meets Michael. He’s handsome, enigmatic and knows more than he can say. In his company, she slowly remembers the truth about herself…
Thousands of years ago, there were eight of them. The one called the Deceiver came to destroy the world, and the other seven followed to stop him. Reincarnated over and over, they carry on—and Mary finds herself drawn into the battle once again. And the more she learns, the more she realizes that Michael will go to any lengths to destroy the Deceiver.
Then she remembers who killed her during her last life, nine hundred years ago…Michael.

Comment: I was given this book as a Christmas gift. I admit that I had my eye on it, although it was never a priority. I figured I could wait for some of my friends' opinions before getting my own, but one of said friends gifted it to me and I was able to read it for free.

This is the story of Mary, a doctor who has had several weird dreams and feels lost in her own life. Then one day something happens and she sees herself running for her life. She meets Michael, who helps her and who shows her who she really is. But there's someone hunting them and the reason why is a real mystery until Mary finally remembers it all...

This book is really weird. It shouldn't come as a surprise, considering how the author is what we readers call a "hit or miss". At least for me, personally, she is. Two or three of her books from another series were perfection incarnated while others were boring and annoying. I kind of hoped this one would be amazing, but well, it wasn't, not for me.

The thing is, I still can't explain what this book is about because honestly I never figured it out. I can understand the idea of special beings, very old and hard to be forgotten, being able to reincarnate and live on throughout the times in hopes of saving humanity? from a bad villain bent on destruction but I can't say more because, nothing else is explained. I'm being true, believe me.

The characters are very introspective, all of them. There is a lot of time dedicated to their thoughts and the story isn't big enough, in my opinion, to favorably divide the attention between that and a captivating plot. So, the plot lost this fight and it seemed there just to fill space, which seems absurd but was the feel it gave me.

I really can't explain this, because it's odd. This is UF and it's only the first of the series so I know more things will be reveled in the next installments, however I don't think I'll read them.

It's really hard to explain so I'll stick to things I didn't like and that stood out to me:

- The fact the main character is a doctor is pretty useless. She could be a nomad for all it mattered. Why does an author insert information just to build up a character but that isn't worth anything? Her being a doctor was just a detail, it didn't matter...so the blurb seemed misleading to me, as I expect it to contribute for the plot somehow;

- The introspective moments were supposed to detail things and happenings to better place the reader, but too much too many only made it boring;

- Apparently, Mary and Michael are reincarnations of special angel-like creatures who protect the world from a bad angel/creature. I have no idea if this is so, but it seemed like it from the descriptions and comparisons made throughout the story, but it's annoying to keep reading without any real goal achieved;

-The author clearly has a vision of things but it never came through to the paper because the plot is Mary running, finding Michael and beating the bad guy so they could run again, it's all so unstructured;

- The romance happens too fast even with past lives memories...what about the current lives they have now? No matter how disjointed or away from society, they just....love each other? No enough explanations or settings done to make it believable for me.

All in all, this book really dispointed me. I think the only reason it isn't worst it's because, despitr all, I could see where the author maybe is going with this? But the way it is being done, the elements chosen to build up the story, the way things are structured...unfortunately, for the most part I was bored and annoyed, thus the weak grade. It was just barely positive, because the writing is still there but honestly, the content....urgh.

Grade: 5/10