by Jay Hartlove
The resurrected Desiree Macklin and Dr. Sanantha Mauwad are back in this third book in the Goddess Rising trilogy. In a previous tale, Sanantha – a psychiatrist and a practitioner of her homeland Haiti’s religions, had helped bring Desiree back from the dead. You see, a friend of Desiree’s father had turned her into a clone of her mother whom he desired. Desiree was out of her own body for a month and has no memories of that time.
Desiree is on vacation Ireland, and chances on a bookshop where she meets Alec Doogan, a paranormal investigator whom we met in the first chapter to establish that he really does know how to look for spirits and spiritual things. Desiree, brought back from death by the intervention of a Haitian god, knows such things are real and they build a friendship, investigating together. Alec’s equipment can sense that Desiree has much more than a human aura.
Things take an odd turn when the Egyptian equivalent of an angel comes to warn them of impending danger. Osiris is interested in what they are doing, and what they might have already unleashed. And there is a long-term war between Isis and Osiris that they are caught smack dab in the middle of. I’m not going to give away what happens next but the breathless action is a fitting capstone to the series.
Hartlove is a good thriller writer, and here he melds science fictional and fantasy elements in the same story with an expert hand; always surprising and fascinating. I read the first two books in the series, also, and you’ll enjoy all of them.
