The frantic pace of this storyline and some poor choices by the heroine made it hard to enjoy this book, even though I liked the characters. I found myself dragging my feet every time I had to pick it up. This is clearly connected with other works by this author, although keeping up with past characters wasn’t a problem. Long ago I read Killing Time, Ross and Megan’s story, and they make a minor appearance here.

Rinna is a female psychic and shapeshifter who lives in a parallel universe that developed alongside ours, yet is completely different – most people having some type of psychic power. It’s a much more totalitarian world, and slavery is common. There are portals between her world and ours, and she has come through one to escape Falcone, the evil ruler of her world. After finding werewolf Logan Marshall caught in one of Falcone’s psychic shapeshifter traps, she debates with herself, then frees Logan from certain death and brings him to her universe to heal. Rinna and her friend Haig live in a cave to escape Falcone’s notice. However, when Logan awakes, all he remembers seeing before his entrapment is a female werewolf, which he knows doesn’t exist. He is groggy, hurt, and not thinking clearly, especially since Haig is none too friendly. So it’s understandable that he attempts to run. Of course, Rinna’s world is nothing like ours, and his foolishness leads the bad guys right to their doorstep.

Rinna and Logan spend the rest of the book running around, shifting from form to form, and jumping universes to escape Falcone, a truly nasty piece of work who wants Rinna to have his psychically talented children to run the universe with him. Falcone abused Rinna in every way and she must overcome emotional and physical barriers to have any kind of relationship with Logan. Perhaps that’s why I had problems with this story. Rinna and Logan’s relationship gets tossed in between guns blazing, shifting, and running from place to place. Their emotional connection never felt real because they would make some emotional progress and then have to run frantically to the next safe spot.

From my point of view, running for my life takes precedence over sex any day. Even Vin Diesel isn’t going to make me change my mind on that, and I don’t have past abuse issues to work through. Strangely enough however, I liked both Logan and Rinna. Rinna struggles with her immersion in Logan’s universe, and with the clear differences in class structure and moral values between the two vastly different places, not to mention simple things like power outlets.

Logan isn’t as fleshed out as Rinna; we know that he comes from a family of werewolves and is a landscape architect, but mainly his character has a single minded determination to get Rinna to love him. He recognizes that she is his life mate and will overcome any obstacle to have her in his life. That can definitely make a girl feel special, and Rinna responds to his overtures.

All of the other characters were extremely one-dimensional, especially Falcone, who I pictured with a long, black, greased moustache that he twirled when thinking up plans to re-capture Rinna. Fans of the series will probably recognize glimpses of the characters from previous books, and the explanation of Rinna’s first appearance to them.

Just when I was beginning to enjoy the characters (even if I didn’t like the rapid pace of the plot), a truly ridiculous subplot involving a policeman is thrown in and Rinna does something that drops her into TSTL territory. So in the end, I was just glad to have finished this one, and I’m sorry to say, I can’t recommend it.