Futuristic Romance.
Olivia was six years old when she was brought to the Facility as an experiment. She grew to be a highly prized assassin with paranormal abilities. Then she gets stolen and made to fight in the Fight Pits of the underworld. Jace must rescue her before she is beyond saving.
The assassins of the top-secret Facility are normally enhanced and adjusted from before birth. Their parents are carefully selected for the perfect blend of DNA. They start training very young. From the age of three, toddlers are started on basic hand-to-hand combat. By the time they are five, the kids are taught how to handle weapons ranging from knives to guns. By the middle of their fifth year, they can assemble any firearm blindfolded. At fourteen, they make their first training kill and by eighteen, they are ready for their first solo missions.
It is a hard life for Facility Operatives. Life is too precarious to allow for hidden agendas. When they laugh, it comes straight from the heart; when they love, it comes directly from the soul. They feel with intensity, and they look after their own; they cannot, and will not, be crossed.
Futuristic Romance.
Olivia was six years old when she was brought to the Facility as an experiment. She grew to be a highly prized assassin with paranormal abilities. Then she gets stolen and made to fight in the Fight Pits of the underworld. Jace must rescue her before she is beyond saving.
The assassins of the top-secret Facility are normally enhanced and adjusted from before birth. Their parents are carefully selected for the perfect blend of DNA. They start training very young. From the age of three, toddlers are started on basic hand-to-hand combat. By the time they are five, the kids are taught how to handle weapons ranging from knives to guns. By the middle of their fifth year, they can assemble any firearm blindfolded. At fourteen, they make their first training kill and by eighteen, they are ready for their first solo missions.
It is a hard life for Facility Operatives. Life is too precarious to allow for hidden agendas. When they laugh, it comes straight from the heart; when they love, it comes directly from the soul. They feel with intensity, and they look after their own; they cannot, and will not, be crossed.
Sixteen-year-old Olivia drops down to one knee and waits in the shadows at the end of the street. She absorbs the darkness, soaks in every sound, every movement, sending out all her senses, searching every corner, every hole. They are out there; Olivia can feel it in her very bones, and she will find them. One by one, Olivia picks them out, mere shadows to ordinary eyes, but to her, they are something more. Boys, waiting in ambush, five of them. Five nasty imbeciles between her and her bedroom window. Her golden eyes narrow in annoyance – the little shits, when will they ever learn? It is just plain irritating that she can’t sneak out of her room and go for a midnight swim without having to look out for this lot. They have never caught her, and they never will. They are simply not good enough. She knows that they have singled her out for who she is and where she came from, that they are mean-spirited and shallow. As it is a matter of principle, she cannot afford to allow them to catch her. Olivia has decided that tonight, she is going to give them something to think about.
Taking a slingshot quietly out of her pocket, she fits it with a paintball. These are not ordinary missiles; she has had them custom-made. It is always handy to have a friend working in the armory. She stalks forward, slinking like an alley cat in the darkness, flowing with the shadows. Target number one is crouching against the tree ahead. He clearly does not expect her to approach from this direction and is hand-signaling target number two, who is lying under the hedging alongside the street. The corner of Olivia’s mouth twitches up into a half-smile; these guys are history. She needs to be fast and accurate if she plans on hitting all five of them in quick succession. They are slippery little bastards, likely to run away at the first sign of trouble. Sinking again onto one knee, she takes aim and unleashes chaos. The ball hits with a solid, satisfying thwack on the back of target one’s head. Immediately his head starts to glow a luminous green, and a horrid stink fills the air. Olivia is on her feet and speeding off before the missile even hits. Before anyone can draw breath, targets two, three, and four are glowing brightly and emitting a foul stench into the night air. There is a brief shocked silence before they start yelling and running down the street. Straight into the Night Patrol – oops!
Now, where is number five? He can’t be far; he will be trying to avoid the patrol who is rounding up his buddies. A hand touches her shoulder, she spins around in a blur of movement and instantly has a boy flat on his back with her knife pressed against his throat. Olivia looks down into coal-black eyes shining up at her with suppressed laughter. She raises a brow in question, trying to keep the humor from her face. You can’t let these guys get away with anything. Leaning forward, she puts her mouth against his ear.
“Jace,” she breathes, “what are you doing?”
She has him pinned to the ground, and he fights down the urge to pull her mouth to his, to kiss her, to taste her. She does still have the knife pressed to his throat after all.
He swallows hard. “Watching the fun,” he whispers, his mouth moving against her ear. “I know where he is hiding.”
In one fluid motion, she is on her feet. Deftly flipping her blade a few times in her fingers, she sheathes her knife. Taking his outstretched hand, she hauls him back to his feet, then signals for him to lead the way.
As it turns out, target number five has cleverly climbed up into a tree on the other end of the street and is looking in the wrong direction entirely (what is it with these guys?). He is determined to get the bitch; she thinks that she is so high and mighty, but she is nobody at all.
Olivia crouches down against the building opposite, with Jace hunkered down close behind her. He is not interested in the lout sitting in the tree who will soon see his ass, no doubt. Jace is focused instead on Olivia. He loves watching her; he loves everything she does. Jace watches as her muscles bunch up under that delicious, smooth golden skin. He can see the edges of her tattoo above the neckline of her vest and imagines the way those black wings play across her shoulders as she takes aim with the slingshot. He loves the total look of concentration on her face, the lift of the eyebrow, the twitching of the corner of her mouth, that half-smile just before she does something totally wicked. There is a brief zinging sound, followed almost immediately by a shout from the vicinity of the tree and an almighty crash. Acid green blooms large on the butt of target number five, and the waft of rotten eggs assaults their nostrils. Jace grabs Olivia from behind and pulls her up against him. Wrapping his arms around her, he murmurs into her neck: “Heads up, Liv, the cavalry has arrived.”
She doesn’t mind that Jace has his strong arms wrapped around her body; nope, she doesn’t mind one bit. She loves the feel of his hard, muscular chest pressed up against her back. She is glad he cannot see her face or read what is written as plain as day in her eyes.
Sure enough, the Night Patrol has rounded the corner with the other four luminous green targets in tow. All the fellows of the Night Patrol are wearing their buffs over the lower halves of their faces. They line the sorry lot up.
“Now then, what is going on here?”
“This is not our fault!” Luminous target number five steps up. “It is that silly Olivia bitch.”
“Yeah!” chimes in number three. “We need to teach her a lesson.”
The Night Patrol guys shuffle their feet, clear their throats, and glance at one another.
Jace is thoroughly enjoying himself; Olivia jabs him in the ribs with her elbow.
“Olivia. Jace’s Olivia?” asks the interrogator.
Slowly Olivia turns to look at Jace, her eyebrows raised in question, her golden eyes glowering at him.
He shrugs his shoulders and grins helplessly at her. Hoo boy, he is in such trouble now! The last thing she needs to hear is being called ‘Jace’s Olivia...’ by her friends in the patrol unit.
“Don’t you guys know by now?” The night patrol officer looks at the five boys incredulously. “Nobody messes with Olivia.”
This was a fast-paced, action-packed bloodlust thrill of a futuristic sci-fi romance.
With a choppy, matter-of-fact writing style that mirrors the characters’ “assassin” mindsets, we are instantly transported to a world of extremes: extreme love and lust between Olivia and Jace, extreme evil via Olivia’s kidnappers, and extreme power via the unchallengeable “World Committee” that saved the world from its own demise:
Fear became a monster on its own, feeding on itself, feeding on the hopeless and the helpless. Humankind was fast heading toward starvation and destruction. That is when the World Committee stepped in.
There is no pause for breath as the novel pummels everything in its way to get to its end. Within its brief word count of around 40,000 words, we get a vivid picture of the inner workings of this dystopian future, and an intense love that bleeds through everything:
The love that started when they were just children has now exploded beyond all limits. There seems to be no satisfying this beast that has awoken in both of them — the more they feed it, the hungrier it becomes.
The detached way of relating the story intensifies its emotions, leaving you on the edge of your seat in the centre of the visceral explosion of feeling. The choice of present tense enhances this, as every occurrence is relayed as fact.
Carrying the story on her shoulders is Olivia — the blood demon with golden eyes who slays all in her path — and her thoughts are the machinations of a brutal, trained killer. When she pounces, it is absolute:
She will not allow this despicable monster to live for one more second than is necessary.
Similarly, Jace is a tightly wound bullet of rage and action:
His command of the team assembled to find Subject Olivia is not to be messed with, and he does not tolerate incompetence for a second.
As Jace races against the clock to get to Olivia, he also battles the rules of their world and the unjust pairing with another girl, Shanty, but his mind never leaves Olivia.
The intensity of their love powers through this swift-paced novel, scorching everything along the way. While there are few surprises, and there are moments of world-building I wish were expounded upon more, this all falls away as the plot bucks and arcs at the right points to propel you through the story along with its characters.
I found myself wishing it were longer, but the saving grace is that there is more, so much more, still to come.
At its core, this is a love story with a fierce beast of a woman at its centre, whose mind cannot be broken even though her body very nearly is, time and time again. Behind her is a man who will fight to the death for her, and values not just her body or her personality, but her indestructible will to survive.
Despite it being couched in a sci-fi, futuristic action-adventure tale with a dash of the paranormal, the underlying theme is one that makes your heart swell with pride and admiration for a love that knows no bounds. I highly recommend for both male and female adult readers, and can’t wait to dive into the next instalment.