Raised by a brutal father and an abused mother, Sean endured. The only spot of happiness in his dismal life was Bronwyn. Though Bronwyn had loved him all throughout her childhood, her parents were dead-set against him and refused to allow her to see him. They endured separation and their own private miseries, living from secret meeting to secret meeting; Sean and Bronwyn lived for the day she would turn eighteen. But Sean was a secret to himself. Who knew why he could read minds?

Sean's father threatened his mother that he was going to tell Sean of his true parentage. She couldn't let that happen. Sean's mother killed the man he thought of as father, and she was sentenced by the judge to an insane asylum. Bronwyn's parents whisked her away to where he would never find her. Sean, arrested for brawling in the courtroom, went to jail and had a surprise visitor--his true father, who told him a few harsh and rather unbelievable truths. He learned the horrible chronicle of his true father's life, of the genetic violation that resulted in him, of the horrible parasite he carried within and the weird powers he derived from it. He surrendered to his father's custody and flew to Ireland to a research facility that was guarded like a prison camp.

Far away in her own prison, locked behind the fourteen foot walls of Galrath Convent in Ireland, Bronwyn cried into her pillow and dreamed horrific dreams. Her unhappiness roused the lonely, horribly ugly Bugul Noz and waked the Nightwind, a demon determined to claim Bronwyn as his own.

Set in contemporary times, this book draws on the mythos of the WindLegends saga. What amazes me about Charlotte Boyette-Compo is the ability she has to breathe life into otherworldly creatures who exist only in her complex mythology. They become rounded, fleshed out, real and sympathetic characters. It is not an ordinary writer who can make this reader cry in empathy for the loneliness of an outcast bogey monster or a starving vampire, or to emote a demonic creature's love and grief, to share the agony over impossible choices in a situation that is bad and can only get worse. BLACKWIND is a fascinating journey hurtling down the road of events to a terrible, inevitable conclusion that will take the reader by surprise. There are twists and turns that you can not imagine and would never predict. Although part of a series, this book can stand alone, though I guarantee if you read it first, you will be getting the rest of the series.

Reviewed By: Allie B
© July 2004

This review is of a previously published version of this title.