FOUND - Sara Rustan

The Sirens, Book 1

Loose Id - www.loose-id.net

ISBN: 978-1-59632-357-5

December 2006

Erotic Paranormal Romance

The Planet Drobery and Kimur -- Future

When Shayla exceeds the maximum time without work, she receives a letter in the mail telling her to report to the full employment office. For her to continue to get a monetary stipend from the government and live in public housing she has to find a job. Not only is Shayla worried about her monetary stipend being lowered or cut off completely and being homeless, but Shayla is also an empath; an unrestricted, illegal and unregistered empath.

The penalty for an unregistered empath is prison time and the installment of a registered inhibitor chip. Although prison scares Shayla, having an inhibitor chip implanted frightens her even more because people who get the chip implanted later in life can literally go crazy. Usually, empathic children are identified when they are born and then are implanted with the inhibitor chip. Shayla does not know how she escaped getting it as a child. When a job is found that matches her skills, Shayla is relieved until she realizes that the job is with the Jheknan’s government.

Gavin Trelgan works for the Jheknan Security Organization as a spy. At the moment his latest assignments have been on the planet Kimur, a society made up of two groups of colonists from Earth: wealthy people and advocates for freedom of open sexuality. Eventually the two groups banded together and the Jheknan’s government is trying to discern whether or not the Kimurian’s aristocracy will vote for or against the off-planet contract policies. If they vote yes, it will enable the Jheknan’s government to make over Kimur as they see fit. But Gavin is also a Siren and he has his own agenda, he wants Kimur’s society to remain closed to the Jheknan’s government. The Sirens have been prosecuted by the Jheknan’s government for years and are planning to relocate to Kimur in a matter of days. When Gavin finds out that he has to take on a new partner, a woman by the name of Shayla, Gavin wonders how to hide his true intentions from her. But when Gavin realizes that Shayla is not only an empath but also a female Siren, a rarity, he realizes that the Jheknan government’s atrocities toward his people are worst than he thought.

FOUND, the first book in The Sirens series, spends a lot of time explaining who the Sirens are, how their abilities work, why the Jheknan’s government is wary of them, and why they have been persecuted as a people. These details are fascinating and understandable. It allows Ms. Rustan to set up a whole new world and culture with rules and manners, but it also makes for a story whose pace is, at times, slow. Sirens are highly sexed individuals who feed off the sexual energy of others. They need to have sex on a semi-regular basis in order to keep their energy levels up and are also telepathic/empathic.

But it is the Siren women who are the most empathic and they are sheltered until they are at an age where they can learn to shield themselves from other people’s (male lust) emotions. Then Siren women are given sexual training from a selected few male Sirens. Yet, for all this information about Siren’s sexuality, FOUND is not saturated with sex. Gavin holds back sexually from Shayla as she learns the ways of Siren’s society. And Shayla, who was rejected by her adoptive parents and raised in a deeply religious community, finally realizes that all those years, picking up men for one-night stands was not because she was weak-willed or a slut, but because she was doing something she instinctively needed to do in order to survive. Secondary characters consist mostly of other Sirens.

The pace of FOUND could be improved, while the chemistry between Gavin and Shayla is more of a gentle and simmering attraction, than red-hot. The Sirens’ culture is intriguing and there are other Siren females waiting to be found, so it would be interesting to see, now that everything has been explained, if subsequent Siren’s stories will be stronger and more satisfying.

Nickole Yarbrough