Echoes in the Dark by Robin D. Owens

Jikata ia a pop star riding the wave of success. But she's upset with herself because all her success is singing the songs of others, and not the songs she's written and would love to sing. But as she finishes the final concert on her tour, she is presented with the gift of a bird known as a Lladranan Cockatoo, and her name is Chasonette.

Jikata, smarting over the death of her grandmother while she was on stage (which she felt clearly), is ready to turn down the gift, when the bird's beautiful singing wins her over. But when Chasonette sings in Jikatas's hotel room, she turns a mirror into a portal and leads Jikata into the land of Lladrana.

It is the singer who has summoned Jikata, and Jikata is there for the Singer and her concerns. The singer is an old woman, and she needs someone who could be her student and replacement, and who has a four octave range. Unlike most of the rest of the Lladranans, the Singer speaks perfect English, and she begins training Jikata in the things she will need to know to fulfill her mission against the Dark. Jikata doesn't like how the old woman is abrasive and thinks she is the one who knows best in every situation, but lulls herself by thinking of her time in the Singer's castle as the Lladrana Spa, where she has gone to rest and recover from the stresses of her tour.

Meanwhile, the Seamistress Exotique, Raine, has been busy designing a ship to carry the people of Lladrana to the Volcano-Island where it lives in order to exterminate it entirely from the face of Amee. Raine, the only daughter from a family of shipbuilders, is attracted to Faucon, the nobleman who has been involved with just about every Exotique to come to Amee thus far. But Faucon was deeply burned by his romance with Elizabeth, the Healer who came to Lladrana with her twin, Bri, and left at the Snap to return to Earth to marry the man she loved there.

Because he doesn't want to get hurt again, he deliberately holds himself back from Raine, even though he's even more attracted to her than he was to any of the other Exotiques. Holds himself back so much that she feels that he scorns her. But when she travels to his castle to learn about the types of sea craft available on Amee, they find that they share a love of sailing small craft, and bond together over their mutual love of the sea.

Jikata takes easily to the training by the Singer, but feels increasingly alienated by the older woman's high-handed behavior. Finally, she discovers that the Singer is keeping her within the Singer's Castle and apart from the other Exotiques, and determines to leave and meet the others, but in her own way. As she leaves, she is met by Luthan Vauxveau, the Singer's former liason with the rest of Lladrana and brother to Bastien, the Exotique Marshal Alexa's husband. He finds himself repelled by Exotiques, by the sensation that the song of their souls is too different, too other, to that of Amee and his own. But Jikata doesn't awaken in him that inborn revulsion, and he finds her much closer in looks to the people of Amee, which may explain why he doesn't feel revulsion in her presence.

During their trip to join the other Exotiques, Jikata and Luthan become lovers. Each also shares the gift of prophecy with the Singer, though Luthan's is weak compared to the two women. Nonetheless, he's had visions of the outcome of the mission against the Dark, and what he sees isn't good. But can he and Jikata, working together with the other Exotiques and their men, find a way to increase the odds of any of them surviving the confrontation? And when his revulsion at Exotiques suddenly revives itself in the presence of Jikata, will she be able to take his reaction as anything other than a rejection and betrayal of all they have shared?

Raine, too, must make a choice about her future, for she is on Lladrana only to design and build the ship for the attack on the Island of the Dark. Once it is finished, she has sworn to return home to the bosom of her loving family and do what she really wants to do: design ships that will take the world into a new era when it comes to ships and sailing. But will she be able to give up the love and acceptance she has found with Faucon, and will he lose the woman he loves yet again? Will Raine allow someone else to pilot the ship she has built to the Island and take part in the Final attack on the dark?

This book was a terrific ending to the Lladrana series, although it seems like Robin D. Owens has cut off the possibility of any future Exotiques travelling to Lladrana with the ending to the book. And despite the book setting the reader up to expect the death of some of the Exotiques and their mates with practically every vision shared by Jikata and Luthan, the ending still came as a total surprise to me. Deaths do happen, and some of them will definitely leave you with a feeling of loss.

But as for the romance parts of the book, I could definitely feel that Raine and Faucon, the Jikata-Luthan pairing didn't seem as authentic or realistic to me. I didn't get any feeling that there was a real attraction there, they just seemed to be drawn to each other for story reasons, not so much that the characters actually felt something for each other. Of course, this may have been due to the fact that, once again, two stories were crammed into the same book, Raine's and Jikata's. I would have preferred an extra book in the series rather than have Raine's story shoehorned into (and taking attention away from) both Bri and Elizabeth's story and Jikata's story. I honestly think Jikata's story would have seemed more compelling if it had been given more space and room to grow.

In the end, I simply found Raine's story to more truly affecting and real, and the effect of comparing the two made this book less successful than the others. I found it the weakest of the series, storywise, even though the series does come to an end in this book. The story of the battle and the ending was good, but the rest of it just wasn't up to the astronomical standard set in the first three books. On its own, it would be perfectly good, but in comparison with the rest, well, not so much.

I love Robin D. Owens and her books, and would recommend this one, just not as much or as strongly as the others. Since both books I found somewhat disappointing had split storylines, I'd suggest sticking to one romance per book in the future.