Publisher: Signet (October 2006)  
Series: Midnight Warriors

As the second book in the Midnight Warrior Series, Parallel Heat takes all the elements that endeared readers to the first book and added more suspense and more romance. As a cross between romance and science fiction, this paranormal romance will delight an audience beyond either separate genre.

Thea Haven, cousin to the exiled king Jared Bennett, has been devastated by his choice of queen in the human Kelsey Wells. After all, since she was a young child, she was raised to take her role as Jared's wife. When Thea encounters Marco McKinley who challenges her earlier presumed destiny. Both feel an attraction they can barely control. As a Madjin, a sworn protector of the royal family, Marco feels duty requires him to uphold his sworn oaths and loyalty, especially when in a past and parallel universe, he betrayed all. Can he change the past and protect the Refarian race and the planet Earth they protect? Unfortunately, the humans at Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming cannot tell the difference between the Refarians and the Antousians. To them, an alien is an alien. In trying to remedy one past betrayal, have deeper complications been initiated and how will this parallel world affect the fate of Earth which stands on the brink of destruction?

Whereas the first Midnight Warrior novel Parallel Attraction focused on the romance between Jared and Kelsey, Parallel Heat steps up the level of suspense and action without sacrificing the complex romance between Thea and Marco. Readers will find the continuing relationship between Jared and Kelsey integrated into the main thread instead of shoved off to the side or as only minor details as in so many other trilogies or series. When I read the first book, I wondered how any other book could possibly surpass the intensity and beauty of the first --- this book matches the first and also adds more suspense through the developing ominous betrayal on the horizon!

The plot is intricate and yet it is the complexity that delights the reader. The possibility of parallel times and universes provokes the imagination, especially in Deidre Knight's presentation of the concept. The primary characters are seen through a variety of perspectives. The stories of the secondary characters are developed with depth and heighten the ever-increasing suspense. The romance has elements of tragedy looming on the edges, but as romance discovered in the midst of a great war, it has an immediacy and depth that caused me to gasp at its beauty and danger.