Sketches by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

Detective Reese Parker is transferred to her childhood home - known as Colony 6 - after her life is threatened in her previous job. She has psychic visions when talking to witnesses and subsequently she feels a serious compulsion to sketch these images on paper. The images lead her to solving her case. At least that's what the prologue novella reveals. I didn't get far enough into this volume to learn what happens. I got only far enough to learn this is not for me because it's too sappy with the heavy-handed romance, and the story held no surprises or even any reason for engagement, for me.

It was obvious that Reese and her closest friends including a guy with the ridiculous name of Jaxon, which to me sound like an oil company - were experimented on and that's why she and Jaxon and apparently the others, have their psychic powers. Better Jaxon than Jacks Off I guess. This is pretty much rammed in our faces like a newspaper headline in block caps. They're looking for missing scientists, get it? They all have powers, get it? They will have to rebel against the very authority they serve to solve this. Yawn. The romance between her and Jaxon is tedious and predictable. The secrets they keep from each other are stupid, and the conspiracy nonsense is nothing original. I found it boring and quit reading in short order.

I can't commend this, and this is another series I will not be following.

Insight by Teyla Branton

Rating: WARTY!

This is a prequel to this author's series set in a dystopian future. It's very short, but it really explains nothing about the world in which detective Reese Parker lives. It merely is a prologue explaining how she came to end up back at Colony 6 - the very place she was only too happy to escape from when she left to join the New York Enforcer Division. It's set some 80 years after what's referred to as The Breakdown, which was apparently an economic and nuclear catastrophe, but we learn nothing of that. Nor do we learn why the NYPD is now the NYED. There is no world-building at all.

We do get right into the story wherein Parker, who gets psychic visions when questioning a suspect (and which she shares with no one), feels subsequently that she has to translate into a sketch, otherwise it physically affects her. She's compelled to get it down on paper at the risk of a restless night if she doesn't, and the image - often of a suspect, sometimes of a scene - in turn helps her to track down her quarry. In this case it turns out to be a big time businessman who is using some of his facilities as a base to manufacture a dangerous drug known as Juke which when mixed with another drug becomes deadly.

Parker eventually nails him., but in doing so makes enemies and against her will - supposedly for her own safety - she's transferred to Colony 6. End of this novella, lead in to the series. The problem with the is is that it makes her look rather stupid. The case she's making hinges on her recorded video of the businessman effectively convicting himself, but the vid is tampered with, and useless. There is no mention of any backup, and Parker herself fails to keep one - something you would think she would be sure to do in a case this important.

I managed to read the whole story - it was very short - but it didn't leave any mark on me, and I was by no means thrilled with it. I can't commend it unless you're already into the series and are curious as to how Parker got there. Even then it's barely worth the time. The writing itself isn't bad, per se, it just isn't very interesting.