The eighty-sixth book I read in 2014 was The Hot Zone by Jayne Castle. This is the fifteenth book in her Harmony series and the third book in her Rainshadow series. I finished this book on 9/27/14. I rated this book 3.5 stars out of a scale of 5. This book is about Sedona Snow (descendant of Arizona Snow from one of Jayne Ann Krentz’s earlier novels) who was the victim of kidnapping and a subsequent awful medical experiment. After she escapes the mad scientist’s lab in the catacombs, she retreats to the island of Rainshadow to try and start over.

Cyrus Jones is the new Guild boss of the newly formed ghost hunter Guild on Rainshadow. While he is exciting to take on this new challenge, he is also there to check up on Sedona Snow. Jones is also a member of the Jones from the Arcane society. Cyrus was sent by Arcane to see if the “formula” worked on Sedona and she has developed some kind of second talent as her ancestor had also done. Multi-talents can sometimes become unstable and dangerous but Cyrus finds Sedona to be not only stable but extremely intriguing.

There’s a lot of other stuff going on in this story, all of which adds to the intrigue of the plot. I do have to say though that if you haven’t read the other Harmony books (or at least one) then this novel might be kind of hard to understand. Harmony is another planet. Apparently at some point in the future a “curtain” will open up between Earth and Harmony. Some people traveled over to Harmony to colonize it and then all of a sudden the curtain closes. The colonists on Harmony are stranded and all of a sudden when the curtain closes all their technology stops working. Also after living on Harmony for awhile amongst the Alien’s psi-strong tunnels, all the citizens of Harmony start to develop natural powers. Most citizens have low-level powers and all citizens need tuned amber to rez their talents, but Sedona and Cyrus are off the charts talents.

Overall I thought this was a really good book. I like this series a lot because its creative and interesting and completely out of the box. Who would ever think of this other planet where everyone has powers and there are underground tunnels that you get lost in unless you have tuned amber on you? Crazy. I would never think of that on my own. So, good book. Nothing outstandingly exciting but overall solid plot, well-paced, and interesting.

Link to author website: http://www.krentz-quick.com/

Link to Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Zone-Rainshadow-Jayne-Castle/dp/0515154725/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1411829348&sr=8-2&keywords=hot+zone