Jane’s Warlord

By Angela Knight

Berkley Sensation (Paranormal Romance), New York, 2007, 298 Pages, $4.99.

This book is not a paranormal Romance. It is a well-written Time travel Romance. Readers should be aware the book contains explicit sex and violence.

Three hundred years in the future the Temporal Enforcement Police note signs of an incursion by a time traveling serial killer who has been responsible for many well-known murders in the past. The records indicate that they might have a chance to bring him down. They dispatch a genetically engineered super-soldier to intervene in his crime spree in 2007. Baran Arvid’s orders are to stay with Jane Colby until Kalig Druas shows up and then kill him.

The story has the inevitable romantic involvement between our hero and heroine, the truly violent and perverted activities of Druas, the confusion of the local police, the danger of Temporal Paradox, the higher ups in the Temporal Enforcement and the fact that Baran was not told whether he would or could save his new beloved.

The most interesting character in the book is Baran’s assistant and sidekick, Freika, a genetically engineered talking wolf. He is acerbic and wise. Jane is a well-developed character. She is a news reporter, haunted by memories of a dominant and malevolent father who worked hard to make her feel small and useless. She runs the Tayanita Tribune inherited from her father. She is covering the first of Druas’s local murders when Baran shows up. Baran, too, carries emotional baggage which threatens the success of his enterprise. Druas, himself, is interesting. The author has absorbed enough about the pathology of the serial murderer to make him a frightening and believable character.

After Baran’s arrival the story goes into high gear and carries you along to the unexpected conclusion. I enjoyed it. – Gary Swaty