Bloodring (Rogue Mage Series #1) » (Reprint)

Faith Hunter is the author of many mysteries and thrillers under the name Gwen Hunter. She lives in Rock Hill, South Carolina. Author website: faithhunter.com.

In a novel filled with lush imagery and exhilarating action, Faith Hunter creates a near-future world caught in the throes of an ambiguous apocalypse-where a woman with everything to hide finds her true destiny revealed.

As humanity struggles with religious strife and seraphs and demons fight a never-ending battle, a new species has arisen. "Neomages" are human in appearance, but able to twist left-over creation energy to their will. A threat to both humans and seraphs, they are confined in luxurious Enclaves.

Thorn St. Croix is no ordinary neomage. Nearly driven insane by her powers, she is smuggled out of an Enclave and now lives among humans, channeling her gift of stone-magery into jewelry making. But when Thaddeus Bartholomew, a dangerously attractive policeman, tells her that her ex-husband has been kidnapped, Thorn risks revealing her identity to find him. And for Thorn, the punishment for revelation is death.

Publishers Weekly

Thorn St. Croix, a stone mage, lives secretly among humans in this entertaining if flawed postapocalyptic fantasy, the first in a new series from the pseudonymous Hunter.... Even Thorn's friends, with whom she crafts jewelry, don't know she's a member of the new race that emerged in the catastrophe brought by winged "seraphs" a century earlier. When her ex-husband disappears, Thorn must use her only partially trained mage powers against the forces of Darkness. Outstanding supporting characters help compensate for a milieu with jarring inconsistencies (sugar is rare, but coffee and aspirin are common; no new computers have been built since most of humanity was wiped out, but the Internet is still an active source of commerce). The author's efforts to sex up the action with the concept of "mage-heat" mages are uncontrollably lusty around seraphs become tiresome, but the strong, cliffhanger of an ending bodes well for future adventures. (Nov.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.