Customer Reviews

Dark Time: Mortal Path Book One

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(21)
2 star:		(15)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

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Courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy

What do an innocent woman sentenced to burn for practicing witchcraft and a pulp crime novelist moonlighting as an former assassin who now saves the lives she used to take have in common? The answer: nothing. And therein lies the problem with this book.

The main character starts out this book as Susannah Layhem, dutiful 17th century wife, herbalist healer, and expectant mother without a care in the world except how to fend off her overly amorous husband during the increasingly uncomfortable end of her pregnancy. When she is falsely accused of being a witch, abandoned by those closest to her, and then suffers a miscarriage due to maltreatment and harsh imprisonment, she willingly accepts a `deal with the devil' (aka the Sumerian demon Rabishu) to escape a fiery death. She becomes an Ageless assassin, killing indiscriminately at Rabishu's bidding. Fast forward about 300 years and Susannah wants out. She finds in the fine print of her demon contract a possible way out ; if she can save as many lives as she took she will be free. She starts her life over as Maliha (pronounced Ma-lie-hah), a 007 rip-off with all the expensive toys and boys a girl could want.

But Maliha is nothing like Susannah. When we first meet her, she is busy working on her tan a trying to think of new ways to pose in her bikini to attract a hottie a few feet away. She is unfortunately forced to `pose and run' as a member of her network of saved lives calls in with a murder case for her to investigate. The rest of the book treats us to a confusing mash up of medical malpractice, drug smuggling, and corporate espionage . Sprinkled throughout all this, Maliha goes on a blind date, gossips with the boy crazy friend who set her up, works on her next hit book entitled, A Lust for Murder, and worries way too much that she might be in love with her blind date (while still engaging in casual sex with a local P. I.). In short she does everything except what you would expect: anguish over the insurmountable task in front of her. She is not the dark, brooding character she should be, given her history. She is not wracked with guilt over her past crimes nor is she consumed with desire to even the scales. She almost seems put out when she gets called away from all her fun.

What!?! Did I pick up the wrong book? Was there a mix-up at the printer? This was supposed to be an Urban Fantasy, not a Chic-Lit Mystery. And yet once Susannah becomes Maliha, the paranormal elements seem to die with her. There are a few passing references to the demon bargain, and a few mentions to Summerian mythology. But that's about it.

This should have been a great book. The premise is one of the best I've heard in a long time. One I could easily imagine supporting a long series, and yet sadly, the author largely ignored the great opportunity she created and instead produced a generic thriller weighed down with chic-lit elements and bad dialog:

"What money? By now all records of your transaction have been wiped out. No one can follow the money trail because there isn't any. What blackmail? The Black Ghost was never here."

A warning is also appropriate because there is a sexual predator in this book and the author includes chapters from his perspective. One that includes him assaulting a woman while she sleeps, his running thoughts leading up to and throughout the assault , and his future plans of brutally raping her. I cannot emphasize enough how ugly this part was to read.

The bottom line is this: with Susannah, I cared; with Maliha, I didn't.

Sexual Content: A couple brief sex scenes. A chapter written from the perspective of a sexual predator.

In 1692, Susannah Layhem is a healer, happily married with a child on the way. Then it all changes when she is whisked away and is accused of witchcraft. She is to be burned to death, executed along with other innocents in Salem. But that is not the end for Susannah. She bargains with a demon that appears to her -- she will be immortal for as long as she does what he tells her. Hungry for revenge, she agrees to the bargain with little hesitation. Fast-forward five hundred years, Susannah is now Maliha Crayne, Black Ghost, an assassin for the demon who owns her soul. Strange things have happened to her over the years: she has developed a conscience. She no longer wants to kill people. Not only that, she also does not want to be immortal anymore. Will she be able to bargain her way to mortality? Yes, only that she has to save a life for every one she has taken over the course of her long life. Easy, huh? She is willing to take the challenge, but she cannot fail. If she does, there will be hell to pay -- literally.

Dark Time is the first book in the Mortal Path series. I feared this was a typical paranormal romance, one of the dozens of paranormal romances on the market today. I am glad to report that this is a compelling fantasy novel. It is enthralling, action-packed, and with enough darkness and science fiction elements to keep you turning the pages. I wasn't sure about the Salem Witch trials setting at first, but it works out well. "Maliha" is a great heroine, well fledged out and complex. The secondary characters, though underdeveloped, are also quite readable and relatable in certain aspects. It is difficult to make characters in fantasy novels feel real, but Dakota Banks succeeds in doing so. A nice four-star escapist read. I look forward to reading Book Two.

I enjoyed the beginning of the story, but I lost interest in the protagonist soon after she changed into Maliha. For me, the story became less intriguing, and the character was less likable, and harder to identify with.

The writing was inconsistent, as though it was edited or written by two people with very different opinions. One sentence would dazzle, the next would disappoint.

I'd like to read more about the protagonist around the time that she begins her journey as one of the Ageless. I thought the character was easier to identify with as Susannah, and I think exploring her character in that time period would have been fun.

In 17th century Massachusetts, pregnant Susannah Leyhem is unjustly accused of witchcraft by a woman who covets her husband. She is convicted, gives birth to a stillborn daughter alone and despairing in prison, and is sentenced to burn at the stake.

Just as the fire is lit under her feet, Susannah is transported to another realm where a monstrous demon offers immortality in return for her promise to be his slave and personal assassin. Susannah is filled with such deep anger and bitterness that she agrees, and her first task is to kill the scheming woman who labeled her as a witch.

These opening scenes of DARK TIME are wrenching and draw the reader in; unfortunately, the author can't keep up the momentum. She skips over Susannah's centuries as a cold-hearted killer, picking up the narrative in the mid-twentieth century when Susannah begins to have a crisis of conscience about all the evil she has done in the name of her demon lord, Rubishu. The author presents several incidents that break the ice surrounding Susannah's heart, quickly arriving at the present when Susannah finally decides that she must break her contract with the demon.

She makes a new deal: she will lose the supernatural abilities that went along with being an immortal assassin and resume her mortality, and she must attempt to save the lives of as many people as she has killed. If she succeeds, she will ascend to heaven; if she fails, she will face a lengthy torment at the hands of her demon lord.

Because we meet Susannah as a naļve, 20-year old healer in the past and, in the present, as a devoted do-gooder, her years as an assassin never quite seem real. In DARK TIME, the primary remnants of those years are her "killing outfit" - a typical ninja suit, with martial art skills to match - and her astronomical wealth. Similarly, we learn that in the bad old days Susannah was quite the heartless seductress, always taking and discarding nameless lovers, but in the present Susannah is pretty sentimental about love. The hook that draws us in, the anger of a woman wronged, and the bulk of her experiences as an assassin seem very separate from the person we get to know in DARK TIME.

There's a lot of Mary Sueing in THE MORTAL PATH - every man who sets eyes on Susannah is in love with her - and a plot involving the execution-style murder of two hackers; Susannah must find out who is responsible before more people die. While the Sumerian mythology in the novel is intriguing, the bad-girl-must-make-good story is nothing new, and DARK TIME simply doesn't stand out.

Posted 8/11/2009: Over 300 years ago a young woman who uses herbs to treat others is convicted of being a witch. She is burned at the stake, just after losing her baby. As she dies she is suddenly confronted by Rabishu, a demon who offers her immortality as long as she kills for him. She is renamed Maliha Crayne and carries out assassinations for her master, until she refuses to kill an infant. Rabishu offers her a choice: either save a number of lives and be released from her bondage, or fail and be damned to eternal torment. This first book in a series by Dakota Banks is full of Maliha's efforts to attain her goal, but is also loaded with action sequences, raw sexual activity and martial arts. The only flaw in the intriguing cover is that she is holding a sai in each hand, but doesn't use them in the book. Maybe next time, and I hope there is a followup in the series. It is difficult to put the book down, once you start reading it. The ending is a surprise and indicates we will be reading about Maliha in more books.

If you've been down the fantasy/horror aisle of your local bookstore lately you've not doubt noticed how crowded they've become with books about female vampire/monster/demon slayers and often the protagonist herself is part vampire/monster/demon. I've never seen much to differentiate one of the books from the next but Dakta Banks' "Dark Time" did intrigue me. First, it begins against the backdrop of the early colonial period, during the time of the notorious witch trial hysteria. Susannah Layhem, a healer and expectant mother finds herself on the wrong end of an accusation of witchcraft, an all too common occurrence during that era. With little regard for her unborn child she's locked away in a cold, dingy room to await her execution--burning at the stake. As the flames envelop her she begs for someone--anyone--to help.

She receives help in the form of a demon called Rabishu, who spares her life in return for her obedience to do his bidding on Earth. Susannah is granted power physical and intuitive powers, as well as near immortality, to become an assassin for this demon. Susannah performs her tasks for hundreds of years until she finally rebels. She's given a way out by Rabishu; if she saves a soul for everyone she's killed, she'll be released. If she fails, she'll be tortured for all eternity.

Dark Time doesn't derive its mythology from the usual Judeo Christian legends of demons but rather ancient Mesopotamian cosmology and the gods of Sumerian myths. This gives the book a decidedly different flavor. Susannah adopts the name Maliha and begins her quest to save herself, albeit with greatly reduced powers.

Banks gives readers a tortured, sympathetic hero, haunted by the child she never got to know and love. Maliha is tough, intelligent, and sexy but she's not the stereotypical hero you see in so many other books of this type. In Rabishu we have a being that is almost completely alien in its evil and total disregard for human life. Dark Time puts a lot of distance between itself and the competition.

I will be the first to admit that there is a target audience for this book; I am not it. I was constantly reminded of someone else's ideas that I'd encountered earlier--Todd McFarlane's Spawn, Ivy from Soul Calibur; Lara Croft, Tomb Raider and any number of television series and movies. Dakota Banks does not improve on any of these, she just tosses bits of them into a blender. The book itself suffers from blenderism in terms of plot, too--jumping rather needlessly from era to era, character to character, and plot point to plot point. Nothing is really developed in any depth--the great conspiracy our plucky heroine uncovers in revealed and destroyed in only a couple of pages. The entire book smacks of shameless padding. And all of this might be perfectly okay, given that our heroine is an insanely hot chick with superpowers, if you're a teenage boy. I'm not, so count me out. I can't help thinking it would all work better as a 'graphic novel' anyway.

Susannah Layhem's life was idyllic, until towards the end of her pregnancy, she was falsely accused of witchcraft. Then things spiraled rapidly out of control, she was beaten and thrown in jail, the trauma caused her to go into premature labor and her baby died in her arms. The next day she was burned at the steak. And that's where the story begins.

At the moment of her death Susannah is "saved" by a devil named Rabishu, she spends the next couple centuries as his assassin toady. But another birth, in the house of one of her targets brings back the memories of her own loss and once her conscience awakens she is unable to turn back. Susannah, now calling herself Malhia Crayne, breaks her pack with the devil, assuming that it will mean eternal hell. But that's when she learns the out. If she can save a life for everyone shes taken she will be redeemed. The catch is, for every life she saves she will age, and the amounts will be variable, sometimes a month, sometimes a year, sometimes a decade.
Fast forward to the current day where Mhalia now calling herself by a dizzying third name, Marsha Winter, is living as a pulp fiction writer in an upscale apartment building, driving fast cards and saving lives... albeit frequently by taking lives. While there is a sub plot to the book its not that important as the overarching plot is about Mhalia's quest to either balance the scales of her deeds or rid the world of Rabishu (I'll let the readers learn how).

Overall it was a fairly enjoyable read with a lot of action, but their were some oddities. First of all it was more verbally graphic in its language than most books of this type, and included some psychosexual stalking etc. that didn't seem to fit or add, but didn't really detract either. I guess you could call them gratuitous. My biggest issues with the book however all have to do with Mahilia/Marsha's decisions.

Ok, so your told you'll live and won't age until you save as many lives as people you killed. As long as nothing actually kills you, you could spend eternity not saving anybody... and not getting older!

Ok that aside, with Mhalia's history as a healer, why didn't she pursue a path in medicine or medical science, imagine what one could accomplish with unlimited time. And, if she did take such a path she could have worked until she perfected a cure for a fatal disease, lets say HIV, and then released it, saving millions of lives all at once. That would have taken care of the worry about not getting enough.
Or she could have been a fireman, rescue worker, EMT or some other profession that naturally involves a significant amount of life saving.

Why would she try and save lives by continuing work similar to her Assassin work, work that frequently necessitated killing. And why do those killings not tip the scale the other way?
While the obvious answer to a lot of the questions is that their wouldn't have been a book if she'd taken another path, these types of things still nagged in my mind throughout the book. Overall it was a good read but it could use some work to fill some loopholes in the story. I'm looking forward to the second installment.

I really, really wanted to like this book. This is my favorite genre, and I sat down to this novel with considerable enthusiasm. But I'm afraid that I simply couldn't engage. It took me about a week to finish a book that by length alone shouldn't have taken more than two days.

The plot is promising: a woman saved from a cruel and violent death by a demon who compelled her to become an assassin for him now struggles to earn redemption. But although I liked the idea of the story, I could not connect emotionally to the main character. Although she's front and center for most of the novel, I never felt like I really got to *know* her. She was human, believable and sympathetic in the opening, but in her later incarnations I found her somewhat slick and shallow. While I knew all about her security systems, I didn't get much sense of her personality, her passions, her hobbies, her sense of humor...really, much of anything. I just couldn't muster much interest in her or, subsequently, her story.

I don't think I'll be picking up any more in this series, but I will not write off Dakota Banks. Banks has a deft hand with her prose, and some of her supporting characters in this story *were* intriguing. Though try as I might I could not like this book, I suspect she has novels in her that will be a better match for my interests.

In 1692 Susannah Layhem is accused of being a witch and jailed; her baby is born and dies while she is incarcerated. She no longer cares that she is innocent and the facts would bear out her contention; but that did not matter to her accusers including her husband and his brother and wife. After she dies in the holy bonfire, Rabishu the demon recruits her to become his top gun assassinating people. For three centuries she did his bidding, but abruptly says no when the demon assigns her to murder a baby as she never stopped grieving for her dead infant Constanza .

The demon is as stunned as Susannah is when she realizes she somewhat is freed of her Faustian contract although she will still have to kill mortals. Now residing on earth as Maliha Crane, she hopes to regain her soul so she can stop her killing after three centuries of doing the demon's bidding. She writes mystery novels and tries to save humans in an effort to balance her karma and is involved in the investigation of the homicides of two hackers.

Although the plot is extremely thin especially when it converts from historical to modern day urban fantasy, fans will enjoy meeting Susannah-Maliha and the worlds of Dakota Banks (including eerie dark Midworld). The first paranormal Mortal Path thriller is dark and enthralling as Rabishu is outraged at Malilha saying no for the first time as she hopes to obtain some redemption for her dark soul.

Harriet Klausner