Age of Eve: Return of the Nephilim, Book 1

Awkward melodrama, tired gender stereotypes, and cliché-ridden hypnotized “passion” that’s actually rape (“On her so fast she couldn’t speak... His fingers slipped into every opening she had”) characterize the opener of Pratt’s paranormal trilogy. Eve Dowling, writer for a New Orleans weekly, attends a charity ball at a plantation and dances with a sensual stranger. She awakens the next morning in the plantation’s garden maze, naked and sexually satiated, with no recollection of the rest of the evening. Worried, Eve’s best friend takes her to a voodoo priestess who explains that the man who “seduced” Eve is possessed by one of the Nephilim, fallen sons of God who control women’s minds and incite their lust. As Eve learns to travel between realities, she realizes that she’s intimately connected to the Nephilim’s goals on Earth. Even readers who enjoy eroticized sexual violence and tedious fights between good and evil can find better writing about them elsewhere. (Mar.)