Review: Dark Time (Mortal Path, book 1) by Dakota Banks

Dark Time (Mortal Path, book 1)
Dakota Banks
Eos
July 28, 2009
ISBN-10: 0061687308

Three hundred years ago, she sold her soul to a demon. Now she wants it back.

For centuries, the woman calling herself Maliha Crayne has lived a second life—as an assassin for the malevolent creature who owns her soul. A haunted killer with the blood of countless victims on her hands, she has finally discovered a way to nullify the demonic pact that chains her: If she saves a life for every one she has taken, she will be free.

But if she fails, her punishments will be unspeakable, unendurable . . . and neverending.

Maliha Crayne has secrets. She sold her soul to a demon three hundred years ago after she was accused of witchcraft and lost her husband, her baby, her own life. Since then has been its slave and its assassin, killing anyone who the demon told her to, not caring if those people were innocent or not.

But now, she wants out and the only way to get her soul back is to undue all the pain and suffering she's caused untold amounts of people. She has to save them and every one she does balances out the ones she killed in the past. However, she's not a super demon assassin who could be shot and would healed in seconds from it anymore. Now, she's mortal and she's in a race with time to save as much people as possible to get her soul back. Because if she doesn't succeed, her punishment will be unimaginable and will never end.

The beginning of Dark Time was powerful and sad. We see how Maliha - actual real human Susannah - is accused of witchcraft and her baby dies in a dirty prison cell. However, the rest of book seemed disconnected and mechanical. At times, it seemed like the expensive spy gadgets and how Maliha had been to all these great places in the centuries she's been alive was more important then her new mission to save lives to save her soul.

There was an overload of information and too much to take. Maliha would go off on completely different thoughts than the actual scene and because of that, I just found it hard to concentrate or even care. There was too much of everything and I feel like a bunch of things could have been cut and the story would have been stronger. And the descriptions was just overwhelming, and overpowered what was going on in that specific scene. The pace just crawled because there were too interruptions with the unnecessary details.

Dark Time left me with mixed feelings. I felt that while it certainly had potential to be a great story. Mahila seemed like a very strong heroine but the extra descriptions and odd tangents completely offset the story. Dark Time ends in a good place but it's obvious there's more to come and I'm hoping the next book is less cluttered and more focused on the story itself.

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[Original review posted on NOR]