Jayne Castle - Midnight Crystal

For many earthly centuries, a legendary curse has plagued the Winters familly, stemming from the tumultuous founding of the Arcane Socieety.  But now, on the futuristic world of Harmoney, the curse's final mystery will be unravelled... head of the ghost hunters guild Adam Winters and dreamlight reader extraordinaire Marlowe Jones must break the curse, save Harmony'e entire underworld - and fight a passion that could destroy them both.

Book 3 of the Dreamlight Trilogy
Book 9 of the Arcane Society series

Sparrowgal's rating - 7/10

Sparrowgal's thoughts - spoiler alert!

This was the first book I read about the futuristic planet, Harmony.  And it wasn't well explained to me, so I was a bit confused, but by the end of course I got the hang of it all.  So that's why the rating was not as high as you would think, due to my being confused for the early part of the book.

It's a great conclusion to the Dreamlight trilogy, with a Winter finally partnering a Jones.  Lifelong enemies historically, but in this book, lovers.  Fitting.

Marlowe is a strong dreamlight reader, the first non strat talent in the Jones family to run Jones and Jones.  Her ability however, makes for a great private investigator, as she can see many clues in dreamlight psi prints.  Adam has discovered that crystals underground are out of sync and could be a great threat to all of Harmony and feels that the Burning Lamp can help fix the problem.  Together he and Marlowe fix the crystal and also unlock the midnight crystal - which was dormant in the previous books.

Adam, as the new head of the Ghost hunters guild, has been having blackouts and hallucinations, which accompany the second talent of the Winters curse.  He can control all spectrums of amber, and can generate nightmare energy, incapacitating would be attackers and foes.  Marlowe with the help of the lamp stabilises his patterns and unlocks his ability to be able to wield the Burning Lamp.

The midnight crystal contains a powerful hypnotic suggestion to wield the lamp to destroy all of the Jones, but the power of the lamp can only be wielded by two people - a Winters and a dreamlight reader.  Adam overcomes it in the end, obviously because of the great love he bears Marlowe.

A true Cerebrus raises its head at the end of the book - Elliott Fortner, father of the triplets in the book, one of whom has dreamlight talent, one has crystal talent and the other  has chameleon talent (and who dated Marlowe and managed to make himself her "perfect" match).  These triplets tried to steal the lamp to help the brother with the crystal talent who was dying.  However, Marlowe was able to stabilise the crystal talent brother's patterns with her own talent, and the trio were grateful.  Elliott however, started to go crazy with his 3 talents and also playing with the crystals.  Adam eliminated him in a final battle.