Title: The Last Twilight
Author: Marjorie M. Liu
Sub-Genre: Contemporary/paranormal
Series: Dirk and Steele
Ratings:

I'm of an age at which using the word "hip," pretty much nails you as being the opposite. But, here's the wicked cool thing about spiking a few years: you get smarter. You don't gain I.Q. points, or anything. You've just made so many damn mistakes — and lived to tell the less-mortifying-with-each-passing-year tale — that you simply get less dumb about stuff.

So, since I'm so very wise now, I'm going to wax all "mark my words, Grasshopper." If you think you don't like romance novels — if you think you're more "Blood Ties" than "ties that bind" — I've got a book and a series for you that'll rock your world: Marjorie Liu's "The Last Twilight," book seven in her spec-flipping-tacular Dirk and Steele series.

Yeah, I hear you: the names Dirk and Steele suggest the series might be about a couple of '80s porn stars. But the novels really are stories of men and women with, as Liu puts it, "more-than-human powers, who secretly risk their lives to help others."

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I'd describe it more as the series Lifetime should be producing to fill that aching void in the lives of "Blood Ties" fans.

In "The Last Twilight," we meet Dr. Riki Kinn. She's a "virus hunter," a doc working in refugee camps in Africa, trying to keep dangerous diseases at bay. When a raging virus kills thousands in hours, Kinn is called to the scene. After she's greeted by mercenaries and machine-gun fire, she's pretty sure there’s something more to the sitch than a "good old-fashioned" Ebola outbreak.

One of Riki's superiors asks the Dirk and Steele agency to send a protector for Riki. And so, Amiri arrives, a man who also lives as a cheetah, who was raised on the African plains. He faces his return to that majestic land with stoic courage; He left Africa after escaping from an evil group called the Consortium. They'd kidnapped him and were performing horrid, inhumane experiments on him.

The nightmare Amiri believed returning to Africa could become, pales in comparison to what he experiences protecting Riki from murderers. Every time he thinks he knows who’s after her, the scene shifts.

But soon his concern for Riki — and the psychic scars life's dealt her — springs more from a meeting of souls than detached bodyguarding. And that's when she becomes a threat to Amiri's life. Because the closer they get, the more she sees: his pain, his fear and, especially, the restrained, but ever-present predator inside him.

"The Last Twilight" is a remarkable novel. Liu creates a world for "big girl" readers: The story is filled with thrilling danger and, yes, blood and loss of life. But Liu maintains a core of respect for the humanity of her characters striving to do right. And she keeps her eye on the prize of a deeply sensual love story steeped in triumph of the spirit. So one is turned on, not off by the real-world scenarios Liu creates from her brilliant imagination — and understanding of what women really like to read about.

OK. I won't say that Marjorie Liu’s Dirk and Steele novels are hip, or sick or any other complimentary adjective I could pull from UrbanDictionary.com. I’ll say it in prose that spans the generations —

Buy the book. Dude.

http://www.MarjorieMLiu.com