Guest Review: Vigilant by Michele Hart

Posted July 10, 2011 by Book Binge Guest Blogger in Reviews | 2 Comments

Judith’s review of Vigilant by Michele Hart.

One surviving hijacker is charged with the murders of a hundred citizens.
One cop sees her innocence.

Alliance I-Marshal Weber hauls Yadira to her home planet and infiltrates the human-trafficking ring controlling her. But he finds himself unbearably attracted to his witness. A gift for detecting deception reveals she’s the next victim of a criminal industry.

Descending into shadowy worlds of slavery, Yadira endures a dark angel stalking her dreams and watches the quiet I-Marshal become dangerous in her defense. Everything about him moves her…except the memory of seeing him execute the most important man in her life. Shouldn’t she take vengeance? Delusions of a heavenly guardian affect her mind.

Slavers and demons plan to snatch her from Weber’s custody while he is uncovering connections, and Weber won’t hesitate to execute the guilty surrounding Yadira. Who but a son of fire can save her from fiends harboring hardcore fantasies of harming her?

When I first began reading this novel I was trying to remember why I agreed to read it. I am not, to state it bluntly, really a sci-fi fan in any of its forms, whether the print media or any other form of entertainment. I just can’t seem to find the energy to wade through all the ins and outs of alternate universes, or to keep straight characters whose names sound like pharmaceutical generics, or figure out how all that futuristic stuff relates to all the other component parts of a story. In short, I usually don’t read sci-fi or futuristic novels.

However, that being said, I am so incredibly thankful that I didn’t miss this one. Yes, there are demons, non-humans galore, guardian angels, uber-cops who have an extra gene which relates them to the heavenly beings (niphilim), teleporting all over the place, really evil — I mean virulent evil people and a crime organization populated with these non-human “soldiers” who have managed to pretty much overtake the home planet of the heroine, a scientist who might not be “mad,” but who is just about as greedy as one can get and thus manages to do some fairly dastardly stuff. Wow! what a cast of characters! Add in the fact that the action in this novel begins with a big bang of sorts, and I defy anyone to not be hooked almost from page one. It is definitely the kind of novel that moves past one’s literary prejudices and gets into the mind and emotions of readers just like that!

Weber is an uber-cop. Don’t ask what his first name is–he never will reveal that–and somehow he is connected with the powerful guardian angel Dokiel. As an I-Marshall who keeps the inter-planetary peace and who has the technology, smarts, training, and will to take down just about any calliber of criminal, Weber is given undercover responsibility to scope out an organization which is abducting blonde, blue-eye women for sale to buyers who will break their will and use them for sexual satisfaction until the cruelty and torture kills them. Yadira, as the only survivor of a space tragedy, is taken into custody as one of a group of terrorists seeking to abduct one of these blonde/blue-eyed women and who finds everyone else in her group killed. Weber believes her to be innocent as he has the gift of reading auras and sees no evil in her, even though she was a part of the group and participated sort of “around the edges” of the action.

Out of their initial encounter in a holding cell grows an attraction that is certainly greater initially for Weber than for Yadira, yet as the story progresses, their connection grows and Weber makes it his mission not only to find the source of the human slavery traffiking, but to protect Yadira from those who would drag her into the evil out of which this illicit activity grows. As the case progresses and as Weber makes contact with the crime bosses, both he and Yadira are subjected repeatedly to situations out of which they may never come as whole and live people. But it seems Dokiel is always there in the shadows and somehow Weber’s knowledge and use of technology as well as his super speed and strength manage to move them in and out of an almost impossible number of strange scenarios.

We know who the bad guys are and we know who the good guys are, well–mostly, anyway. But there is so much more to the story and to really delve into the depths and the surprises and the twisty bits all along the way, you are just going to have to pick this one up and read it for yourself. You will encounter love at its finest, true and horrific hate, deep grieving and overwhelming joy. It is a tale of people who may live in a strange and wonderful world, but all the component parts that make up real life are there in some form. And through it all is woven the strand of the telling of a journey of growth and becoming a woman of strength and inner beauty in such magnitude that when it is all done, Yadira doesn’t even resemble the reticent and shy girl of those first pages.

Obviously Michele Hart is one of those people whose imaginations never quit and who has gifted readers with the fruits of her dreaming. She has also demonstrated a very skilled writing style that moves the story along and keeps the interest of the reader successfully throughout. This is one of those wonderful books that make me wonder out loud: “How do they think up all this stuff?” It will be a rare person indeed who does not find this story to be awesome and one of the Grade A, Top-of-the-Mark books no one should miss.

I give it a rating of 5 out of 5.

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.