Reviewer Paranormal

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Review of When Forever Died by Mia Darien.

Reviewer: Alastair Rosie

This is book two of the Adelheid Series so I’m still finding my feet in Mia Darien’s world of preternaturals. It’s a classic detective story set in a world where preternaturals live in full view of humans, similar to the world of True Blood. The heroine is Dakota, a shapeshifter and it opens with her pursuing another preternatural who has been terrorising the local New England communities. It then moves onto the hunt for Carrie, a vampire who has gone missing, apparently preternaturals are supposed to register their presence and when they don’t it gets, complicated.

Add in an Ancient, Dakota’s shapeshifting sister, a group of reincarnated Norse deities and we’re set for a rollercoaster ride in what is a well thought out alternate world. Darien has chosen to relate the details of this world in monologue fashion using Dakota’s jaded voice. Dakota is a hunter and tired of hunting her own kind. She reminds me of those pulp fiction detectives, she drinks too much, her relationships with her co workers and the police are almost always tinged with sarcasm. Her love interest, Moore is a good counterpoint for Dakota as she chases her ex girlfriend, the vampire Carrie.

I found it an easy read, in the style of Hammer but wondered if the book couldn’t have been longer which would have given her the option of expanding and colouring her alternate world. There are times I want to know more about particular aspects but she seems content to leave us with snapshots. Another thing that did irk me was passages rendered in German. If you’re not fluent in German you won’t read those passages. Foreign phrases and local English dialects should be limited to single words that we all know. She has however kept away from the Bram Stoker connection with vampires which has probably been done to death a thousand times over.

Overall though the book is an easy read, perfect for whiling away the time on a train. It won’t tax your brain to the point you’re constantly backtracking trying to find if you’ve missed something. I’d give it a four out of five because I really wanted to know more of the preternatural world and although there was a guide to the preternatural at the end of the book I would have preferred it was worked into the book itself as well. It would have bulked the book out a little but if it’s a good read you won’t notice the extra word length.

Looking forward to book three and will go back to read Cameron’s Law in the next few weeks.

Written by Alastair Rosie. June 2012.