Jaid Black, Deep Dark and Dangerous

Deep, Dark and Dangerous

Jaid Black

Pocket, Mar 2006, $14.00, 272 pp.

ISBN: 1416516123

Though at the top of her game as a famous in demand actress, Madalyn Mae Simon decides she no longer needs to take the shallow smiles from so-called friends and terrible movies. She needs to escape far away from the phoniness of Hollywood, but wants to stay in the United States, so she leaves Southern California for Alaska, but she does not even stay in Anchorage. Instead she moves to a village in the arctic where she hopes to regain her mental health.

Her harmony is disrupted when her sister Drake persuades Madalyn that camera in hand, they should explore the wildlife of the tundra. However, they run into Otar and three of his Viking compatriots who abduct the siblings for fear they will reveal to the outside world, that beneath the frozen tundra is their home New Sweden; besides, they need breeders for the colony. Otar recognizes Madalyn as the actress he secretly has loved for years from the audience and plans to make her his wife; if she refuses she takes her chance on the marriage mart auction. Madalyn begins to fall in love with her new husband, but assumes he loves the screen version and not the flesh and blood real person.

Fans will initially be skeptical of the setting, classifying it with Santa's North Pole, but rather quickly, through the characters and the deep social relationships, readers will believe that New Sweden exists underground within the Arctic Circle. This conversion occurs because the strong cast, especially the lead couple, makes the background feel plausible. The exhilarating storyline that never slows down once Otar realizes Madalyn (and Drake) has seen them, which leads the audience seeking the previous romantic fantasy set in New Sweden, the novella Hunter's Right, part of TIE ME UP, TIE ME DOWN.