"Some of Jayne Ann Krentz's best work"

Since they repackaged two from this series under the title of Harmony, I got these out and decided to reread them and found I enjoyed them more the second time around. This is JAK writing as the Jayne Castle she saves for her paranormal tales, and it's her best writing of late. In Amaryllis, Zinnia and Orchid (and later with After Dark and After Glow) the off-world of Harmony antics show JAK at her top form. These books originally received mixed reviews from fans, not completely used to JAK's paranormals. It's in her Jayne Castle works where she is most original, yet her fans were initially resistant to the paranormal theme. Now the paranormal market has caught up with her, and is so hot, these are getting better reviews. So if you missed the Harmony tales, don't hesitate to seek them out.

In this off world tale, Amaryllis Lark is a private detective, but she is also a prism. In the Earth Colony of Harmony, people evolved with two supernatural talents: either they were a prism or a psychic. The prisms serve to increase the power of the psychics by channeling their powers through them, amplifying it and keeping it stable. Even the strongest of psychics needs a prism, for without them they cannot control and maintain their powers for long periods.

Lucas Trent, the founder of Lodestar, hires Amaryllis for her prism talents. He is an off the chart psychic who need the talent of a prism of his level. A psychic and a prism have to be matched. They are rated 1-10 levels and if a psychic is stronger than a prism, the prism can experience burn-out. There are few prisms who can handle Lucas Trent's strong psychic abilities, so he is delighted to discover Amaryllis can handle whatever power he channels through her.

Lucas is concerned one of his Lodestone employees is selling corporate information to his competition. He, originally, hired Amaryllis to help catch the industrial spy, and to use her talents as a prism to help his focus his psychic talent to trap the spy. But soon they are involved in a murder mystery. In this case, opposites do attract, and Lucas and Amaryllis sizzle, their attraction amplified by the psy-power between them. However, Amaryllis is undergoing the rigors of a ﷯﷯matchmaking﷯﷯ service. All solid marriages on Harmony are founded on this service. While she is falling in love with Lucas, she fears it will only be an affair. Lucas has other plans and is not about to let his true match slip through his fingers.

In order to foil nasty corporate to-dos, they are forced to join talents...and more! A super, brilliant work from the fine craft of JAK, without the narrow POV (point of view) being voiced on writers today. Simply magic!

Reviewed by DeborahAnne MacGillivray
Posted September 18, 2004

Summary

Amaryllis Lark is undeniably beautiful. She's also one of the best psychic detectives on St. Helen's, the earth colony recently cut off from the mother planet. A bold hunch leads her from a wild murder investigation into a red- hot love affair with the rugged head of Lodestar Exploration, Lucas Trent--and no power on heaven, earth, of St. Helen's can keep them apart. This is the first installment in Castle's futuristic series.