"Excellent world building, realistic characters, very well written"

Jo Sha Ta Rem was sent back to this place and time to assassinate Dr. Helen Matthews. He must do this in order to effect the release of his sister, Sa Rah. She was kidnapped by the TFE, an environmentalist group of terrorists from his time. The TFE has killed before and Jo Sha doesn't doubt that they will kill his sister if he doesn't comply with their request. As he's standing over Helen's bed with a knife in his hand, something stays his hand. He just can't bring himself to do it.

Helen has worked very hard to get to where she is today. Her family never understood her. She was the black sheep of the family. She was a little on the plump side to fit in with the "in crowd" as her sisters did, and wasn't athletic like her brothers were. She decided to do well in school and her chosen field of study was science. She has always been competitive and definitely doesn't take orders well. She has finally made it to the head of the research project she is involved in as a biologist of plant life. Everything is going well until her boss tells her that there will be another scientist joining her team. As soon as Helen looks at him, she knows she is in for trouble. Everything that she has ever wanted in a man, this new scientist is. She feels an immediate attraction to him and tells herself that she will fight it and won't give in.

The scientist, Dr. Josh Trem, on the other hand, has decided that Helen is his truth mate and will stop at nothing to possess her. Now Josh has to try to find a way to make it look like he killed Helen, while trying to keep her safe from the TFE -- with Helen resisting each and every step of the way. Meanwhile, he also has to figure out a way to rescue his sister from the clutches of the TFE.

I absolutely fell in love with Eden Robins' planet of Tanviera. I wish that I could live there. I really enjoyed her vision of the future 1000 years from now. All of the characters are so very realistic that I felt as if I've known them forever. I really enjoyed how she dealt with Josh's parents and the marital problems that they were having. The only thing I couldn't figure out was why Helen never asked Josh what yaquesh meant, with her questioning everything else, this was the one thing she never questioned. Everything about this story was well done and well written, the world building was just perfectly done. Will there be another story telling the tale of Tristan and Sa Rah?

Reviewed by Chere Gruver
Courtesy Sensual Romance Reviews
Posted December 4, 2003

Summary

Ambitious and dedicated environmental researcher, Helen Matthews, has her future all planned out, and that includes becoming lead scientist for the Phoenix project. Honor bound soldier from the future, Jo Sha Ta Rem, has his own agenda. He must save his sister from an uncertain death at the hands of environmental terrorists by impersonating a researcher, so that he can get close enough to Helen to assassinate her. Helen and Josh are forced to work closely together, and the chemistry between them runs rampant. Murder is far from Josh's mind as he tries to figure out how to fulfill his duty to his family and save Helen. Science suddenly becomes unfathomable to Helen, as she is whisked off to the future where she must decide if she can finally put her painful childhood behind her, and open her heart to love.