From the United Space Alliance medivac ship Orion, Dr. Caitlin Kelly led the team to investigate the medical distress call from Sector Nine, near the edge of the Sinisters, an area of space dangerous to visit. The planetoid in question was an uninhabited gray stone barren, but tracking the two weak life forms led the medical team to a cave where they found nine female giantesses, dead of hemlock poisoning, holding hands in a ritual circle. Deeper in the cave, a last woman died before their eyes, and behind a door, they found a dying man hanging in chains. The man, the corpses and their few weapons, a scroll and a journal were taken aboard.

Decoded by the computer, the scroll turned out to be Khiershon Cree's death warrant for crimes against womanhood, and Khiershon Cree was the man recovering in their med lab. The diary was a history of Kiershon's mistreatment among the Amazeen. All of the female members of the crew except for Caitlin had erotic dreams of Khiershon the night after he was brought on board, but as for Dr. Caitlin Kelly, he had psychically wished her to sleep.

The medivac ship encountered a vessel manned by Iyan McGregor, a compatriot of Khiershon. Shortly, McGregor transported to the Orion to see Kiershon's condition. In addition to the substantial damage done by Kiershon's Amazeen captors, Kiershon was also suffering from blood hunger caused by the parasites that caused him to be a "Reaper.Ó McGregor explained the hunger to Caitlin. Caitlin, as a healer, fed him from her own veins, later discovering that a Reaper was an assassin who could track her from anywhere, any time by virtue of having consumed her blood. That proved not to be an issue because Kiershon Cree decided on having Caitlin as his mate.

The earth women realized that all of the male crew had disappeared, leaving alien men in their place. The men had only been taken onto the alien craft, as they would have resisted McGregor taking control of the Orion, which was valuable because of its medical supplies. Encountering an Amazeen ship, the women took the helm so that they would be neither boarded nor blown away.

On Terra, Kiershon's father, Khamsin Cree, had not been so lucky in avoiding Amazeen. He sensed an Amazeen bounty hunter tracking him, likely accompanied by ten to fifteen more--bounty hunters he was keeping secret from his American wife, Bridie.

DARKWIND continues the BLOODWIND story into the next generation, with only a gap of the months of Bridie's gestation and childbirth. As in the rest of Charlotte Boyett-Compo's fiction, this is an emotional roller coaster, a compelling read populated by characters who are very real in spite of unnatural elements like shape-shifting, telepathy, and evil parasites controlling their host-assassins. These characters deal with unreasonable superiors, slavery, revolution, inequality between the sexes, loneliness and acceptance, love and hate. The mythology of Charlotte Boyett-Compo's dark universe is seamlessly integrated from work to work, building a complicated yet networked cosmos that is as tangible as and far more terrifying than our own. A superior read. But keep the lights on.

Reviewed By: Allie B
© July 2004

*The review is of a previously published version of this title. A new edited version of this book is available.