I haven’t read Whiteout, the first book in this series, but I think it’s actually pretty easy to pick up what’s going on. Leo Eddowes is a hotshot pilot and part of a crew doing their best to keep a deadly virus out of the hands of Chronos Corp, a giant biotech company who will stop at literally nothing to possess it. Leo and her crew have tracked the last known sample, and the man who had it, to an extremely remote Alaskan village. Now Leo’s on her own (and sick with a stomach bug) when Chronos’ murderous mercenaries arrive, and has to bail out in an ancient plane, sent on a mission by Old Amka to rescue someone who turns out not to be the man she’s after at all. Instead, he’s Elias Thorne… domestic terrorist… who's supposed to be a dead man.
Now Leo and Elias are on the run through the brutal Alaskan wilderness together, hunted, injured, forced to rely on each other. And in a whole separate adventure, Amka decides she’s not letting these mercs take over her village and hold her people hostage, and sets out to do something about it.
Whew. This is an absolute adrenaline rush thrill-ride of an adventure romance. It’s quite clear the author kept looking at her story and going “hm… how can I make it worse for my characters?” The Alaskan wilderness at ice break-up time provides plenty of options. Honestly, though, I’m not sure even two people who were as desperately attracted to each other as Leo and Elias would be able to act on it as much as they did in those situations. Hypothermia tends to preclude arousal, and frankly they were both smart enough to understand they needed to conserve their energy, but it didn’t seem to occur to either of them. Romantic license, I guess!
Honestly, Amka was my favourite character in the story. Bad*ss old lady lesbian willing and able to take out an entire team of heavily armed, well-equipped mercenaries? That’s catnip, right there. Frankly I thought she should have been asked to join Leo’s team.
I liked that the villains weren’t all one-dimensional too, with Amka recruiting one of the mercenaries having second thoughts once he realized his colleagues were quite happy to hold women and children hostage, threaten and harm them, and an intriguing tracker on Leo and Elias’ trail whose motives weren’t at all clear.
Superbly well-written, with so much action it’ll leave you breathless, I’m happy to give this five stars.
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this title via NetGalley.