Eden Winters’ Darkness is an inventive and intriguing mixture of police procedural and urban fantasy with a dash of sci-fi and a touch of romance, and is quite unlike anything else I’ve read recently. The worldbuilding is excellent, but the pacing is uneven; I liked that the author takes time to set up the story and characters, but the downside to that is that the second-half feels rushed and the ending abrupt, and while I liked the two leads as a couple, their romance takes a bit of a back seat to everything else that is going on. Darkness is fascinating and utterly compelling in parts, but it does suffer from information overload at times, and I couldn’t help thinking it might have worked better as two shorter instalments of a duology rather than one longer-than-average (for a romance) novel with such a lot going on.

When the story begins, Detective Morrisey James and his partner, Will Murphy, are called to the scene of several brutal murders. He’s seen a lot of truly awful things in his time as a detective, but this… this has to be one of the worst. The past few months have seen a huge increase in the number of murders and other serious crime in the Atlanta area for no reason anyone can determine, and he’s drinking himself to sleep most nights just to be able to keep the nightmares at bay. Once finished at the scene, Morrisey and a clearly distraught Will return to the precinct; Morrisey exits the car and tells Will to go home to his family before heading into the building – and turns too late to prevent his partner from blowing his brains out.

Morrisey’s life hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses. He’s always been something of a loner and has never felt as though he really fit in anywhere; his adoptive parents died when he was young and he has no other family, his one serious relationship ended tragically and now, aged forty-two, he mostly sees life through the bottom of a bottle. Will’s suicide sends him spiraling further and even wondering how much more loss he can stand before he goes out the same way.

Morrisey is on a booze run at an out-of-the-way liquor store, but before he can go inside, a man runs out and almost knocks him down, and a woman follows, screaming “He shot Bob!” Morrisey gives chase and manages to corner the suspect in an alley after wounding him. The man is writhing on the ground, clearly in pain, but when Morrisey approaches, he launches upward and pushes Morrisey to the ground, fighting like a madman, grabbing Morrisey’s head between his palms and squeezing hard. Morrisey doesn’t know what’s going on; pain is searing through his mind and horrifying images are flitting behind his eyelids, but he can’t throw the man off – would he die from having his head crushed like a walnut? Then white light explodes around him, his assailant howls and lets go, and with his head pounding, Morrisey opens his eyes to see the face of an angel looking down at him before he passes out.

Agent Farren Austen of the FBI Alternate Entities Task Force was ripped through a portal from his own world about ten years earlier and, with his family and lover gone and no way back, joined the FAET to locate fellow ‘travelers’ and bring to justice those that commit crimes. Domus is dying, and many more of his kind are travelling to Earth to survive – but in order to do that, they must inhabit the body of a human, and unfortunately, there are many who are unscrupulous enough to kill humans so they can take over their bodies rather than, as Farren did, take the body of someone recently deceased. It’s these travelers, together with the trafficking operation that has recently stepped up its activity, that Farren and the FAET are out to take down. He witnesses the chase through the darkened streets and immediately recognises the killer as being possessed by an occisor, a dangerous creature that feeds on negative human energy. He follows and arrives at the alley where, incredibly, the human is somehow fighting off the occisor’s attempt to possess him. Farren swiftly banishes the creature, puzzling over the fact that the human had been able to stop the occisor from taking over his body – which shouldn’t have been possible.

Needless to say, Morrisey James’ life is about to become a whole new level of weird. With nods to Men in Black (which Morrisey has somehow never seen!) he’s recruited to a special division of the FBI, created to solve traveler-related crimes, and partnered with the model-gorgeous Farren, who is tasked with Morrisey’s training and induction. Once they team up, the story becomes a thrilling race against the clock to track down the traveler who is masterminding a truly horrifying campaign of death and destruction throughout Atlanta, one designed to create chaos and lead to war between travelers and humans.

The worldbuilding here is really imaginative, and watching Morrisey gradually discovering the truth of his mysterious past is fascinating. There’s some excellent storytelling going on, but the romance between Morrisey and Farren is not as satisfying as I’d have liked. The fact that they’re intensely drawn to each other is nicely set up and the chemistry is definitely there, but the romance is awkwardly paced; they embark on a sexual relationship fairly quickly, but then spend too much time second guessing themselves, so there’s no forward momentum for a while. And their circling around one particular issue is dragged out for way too long when the answer is blindingly obvious to the reader – and should, frankly, have been so to Farren. But apart from that, they’re strong and appealing characters who, with betrayal a constant possibility, are determined to get the job done, no matter the personal danger. Morrisey’s struggles with alcohol and his own inner darkness are well written, and I liked that the author doesn’t take the easy way out and have him miraculously transform into someone who has his shit together once he meets Farren and joins FAET.

The secondary cast isn’t large, but the stand-out is Jessa, a traveler who, very unusually, shares bodies with her hosts, who helps Morrisey out (mostly!) and provides some useful information about the trafficking operation.

Despite the reservations I’ve expressed, I enjoyed Darkness and am recommending it, partly because it’s so unusual, partly because it encompasses some excellent storytelling and partly because I’d read more books set in this world. Potential readers should be aware that it is fairly dark in places; there are descriptions of some gruesome crimes and Will’s suicide takes place on the page – and should also bear in mind that while the relationship between Morrisey and Farren is key to the plot, their romance is a little underdeveloped. In the end, though, kudos to Eden Winters for coming up with a story that satisfied my craving for something ‘different’ – even if the end result isn’t quite the DIK I’d hoped for.