Lindsey Gray
Written on Mar 14, 2014
The synopsis piqued my interest to the point that I was excited to start reading this story. Once I started though, I had a great deal of trouble getting into it. After the first few chapters running through the streets of Seattle in the mind of Dakota Reyes, things finally got moving. At that point, the story became interesting. Unfortunately, it took me a few weeks of reading off and on to get there. Dakota inadvertently follows shape-shifting alien, Nihkil, through a gate to another world, a world of humans, morphs, supernaturals, and everything in between.
I had to keep my mind wide open to take in all that was going on. The society of the world Nihkil lived in didn't make much sense at first. Humans were the dominant and morphs seemed to be the submissives, but morphs had great powers too. Also, the morphs had their own set of laws that the humans couldn't violate. Nihkil, being an extraordinary morph, was in essence a sexual slave for the humans as well as a guide to the gates of the universe. When he passed through the gate with Dakota, the two bonded and she took control of his "lock". This power over Nihkil made Dakota his mate. While being his mate, one would assume that he would not be allowed to continue as a sexual slave, but that didn't seem to be the case. Even though Dakota never wanted the responsibility of being an alien mate, she was jealous and upset upon realizing what Nihkil was still doing.
Since this story is told in the first person point of view of Dakota, a human from Earth, Andrijeski describes the alien world in great detail. At some points, a little too much detail. There was a lot of non-verbal communication between Nihkil and Dakota as well as several other characters, which I did find very interesting.
As hard as it was to follow at times, the story is a multifaceted creation that took an inordinate amount of imagination to create. I am interested to see where Andrijeski takes this story.
Thank you to the JC Andrijeski and The Masquerade Crew for providing me with a copy of "The Morph" in exchange for an honest review.