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Shielder #2

Shadower

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Science Fiction Romance from RITA nominated author!

Injured in a bar fight and then stranded on a hellhole planet when her ship is stolen, smuggler Moriah Cameron finds herself at the mercy of arrogant Sabin Travers. She manages to elude him, but quickly realizes she has no good option to get off Calt, so she stows away on Sabin’s ship. Sabin discovers her just as she stumbles upon a secret that could affect hundreds of lives—a hidden Shielder colony. Forced to take Moriah captive to protect that secret, he decides to take her to Elysia to have her memory altered.

Instead of being grateful that he didn’t shut her up permanently, Moriah is infuriated about being delayed from picking up a crucial shipment. In return, Sabin resents the disruption this defiant and ungrateful woman creates in his life.

Having a strong aversion to domineering men like Sabin, Moriah manages to steal his ship and escape—after dumping him, drugged and naked, at a Pleasure Dome. Her freedom is short lived when Sabin catches up with her. He finds a way to make her pay, and she has no choice but to go along.

As they battle wills and wits across the quadrant, Moriah is shocked by her growing attraction to Sabin. But when she discovers he is also a shadower, all bets are off. She eludes him once more and heads to a dangerous but lucrative delivery. Things go wrong at the drop, and only Sabin’s major sacrifice can save her. But ultimately, it’s love, acceptance, and healing that save them both.

368 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2000

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227 people want to read

About the author

Catherine Spangler

11 books243 followers

Catherine Spangler is a bestselling and award winning author of the Shielder series (futuristic romance)and the Sentinel Series (romantic urban fantasy). She is a two-time Golden Heart finalist and a RITA finalist and has received numerous other awards and honorable mentions.

She is an active member of Romance Writers of America and her local chapter, Dallas Area Romance Authors. A frequent speaker at writers' groups and conferences, she has taught workshops on the creative process, writing techniques, writing paranormal romance, and goal setting.

She lives in north Texas with her husband and a menagerie of critters. She loves reading, taking naps on the sofa with a good football game for background noise, eating chocolate, and playing poker.

Catherine's fun fact: I celebrated the sale of my first book, Shielder, by drinking champagne from a plastic cowboy boot mug. My critique partners brought four of them to my house, along with the champagne. Drinking champagne from those cowboy boot mugs every time one of us sold a book became a tradition, which we still honor.

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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
Profile Image for Melanie.
193 reviews16 followers
September 25, 2012
Couldn't say no to a bit o' space romance when I spotted this in good ol' Big W. And it didn't disappoint!
Profile Image for ★Moonrise.
139 reviews313 followers
August 30, 2016
Stopping off at Giza's on the planet Calt, we meet our main character, who has no idea that one action is about to change the course of his life. Giza's, where the hazy lighting, and misty atmosphere affords anonymity for all, is just another stop for Sabin Travers on the gritty, remote planetary way station. But he has business to conduct. And on Calt, where most business dealings involve illegal trade and activities, it is the last place one would expect to see a beautiful woman. And yet, there she is... and she is about to get herself killed.

Moriah thought she would be all right at Giza's. All she wanted to do was gamble, and win enough money to secure transport off the planet. But the game ended with much more than she bargained for, and outside of Giza's, she was attacked. Now, waking up in a strange ship, she realizes her rescuer is the man from Giza's... the handsome, arrogant, and blatantly chauvinistic Sabin Travers. Moriah has places to be, and she is desperate. She concludes that there is only one way out of her predicament, and it involves earning Sabin's trust... just long enough to gain access to his ship.

Although Sabin is a bit brash, Moriah presents as unnecessarily cruel. Instead of showing gratitude toward her rescuer, she steals his ship, and abandons him on a nearby planet, without clothes or other basic essentials. We do discover the root of Moriah's distaste for strong, overbearing men -- her history is filled with men who wanted to control her. Still, it didn't make her behavior toward Sabin any more excusable.

Sabin Travers has plenty of flaws of his own. Having experienced a tragedy in childhood, he is mostly alone, aside from his partner. But his backstory is overshadowed by his domineering attitude, and blind spots for a beautiful face. He makes passes at Moriah, and doesn't seem to have a clue that he is being manipulated. He trudges along, calling her "sweetheart", and pining away for her for the first half of the book. In the second half, following a pivotal event, he seems to make a genuine shift in consciousness. And although the turnaround is abrupt, it is a refreshing change of pace!

Overall, I wanted more cohesion between the main characters, and less anger, manipulation, and deceit. Without a strong connection to the characters, I found it tough to stay invested. Still, the story is very well written, with a fully developed plot, and plenty of descriptives. From the food replicators, to the unusual plants and creatures that inhabit the planets, every detail is in place. We meet an array of alien life forms, and travel to distant lands, each of which has its own unique characteristics. The vivid descriptives, and complex plot make this futuristic romance worth the read!

Note: This book was provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
Profile Image for Hilcia.
1,379 reviews24 followers
October 2, 2010
The second book in the Shielder SFR series, Shadower is my favorite book of the series. Moriah is one of the strongest heroines of this series and my favorite female protagonist all around. Loved the action and the romance.
Profile Image for Lee.
Author 1 book7 followers
May 30, 2016
Moriah gets involved in a brawl in a hive of scum and villainy. Sabin Travers, a bounty hunter, saves her bacon, but she is not pleased to get his help. However, since her ship offworld has flown the coop, so to speak, she stows away on Sabin's to get near where she wants. They are attracted to each other, but he doesn't want to think too deeply about relationships and she can't trust any man. She proceeds to steal his ship so she can make her critical-to-her-life smuggling delivery. Sabin finds her and his ship, though, and he shall have his revenge which he feels twisted up about because he wants her. Also have her memory tinkered with because she knows too much. Moriah is not wild about these ideas. Meanwhile, there are evil bounty hunters around to cause all kinds of trouble for them.

With what Moriah's been through, it makes sense that at first she is disgusted and freaked out by Sabin's attraction to her. It takes time and exposure to let her warm to him. He begins to understand he has something to prove to her and works on it. With all their personal problems, they are kind to each other when it counts. Even when he's angry and vengeful, Sabin does not treat Moriah poorly or hurt her intentionally, and he is decent to those she cares about. Despite her earlier antics, Moriah takes care of Sabin when he's most helpless. That helps convince me that the romance has a caring component in addition to physical attraction.

The world-building is consistent, as are the characters. The structure of the story is tight. It's mostly action and zooming around, and accordingly fast-paced. No loose ends or filler scenes. Elements fit together, and most of the characters are memorable. Moriah's associates are bold tough women who care for her and each other: Celie the live-in-the-clouds aspiring mechanic, Lionia the warrior who believes every problem is a nail to be hammered, the hammer being a carving up of people, and Janaye the older lady who reads auras and gets mystical premonitions. The ship mechanic who joins them is hilarious in his pursuit of Lionia.

Moriah is a difficult woman to like. Her pride makes her seem ungrateful and uncivilized. We get an idea of her demons early on, but not why the smuggling is so important to her until later. Until then, she seems ruthless and arbitrarily acerbic. She is smart, strong, and self-sufficient, though, and that's why Sabin stays interested instead of saying 'forget this I am so outta here.' It takes a while to understand all that, though, so I read with a bit of dread as to what she'd do next for a while. The first seduction scene left me unsettled, as ulterior-motive sex makes me squirm.

The major villains are just awful people. I like some more human qualities in the villains I read about so I don't find them cartoonish. Moriah and Sabin are morally conflicted, which keeps me reading, but the baddies are just evil-in-a-spaceship.

I was curious how to see Shadower would stand on its own, so I read it before Shielder. Since it takes place before the first book, I didn't miss any important background events.
Profile Image for TINNGG.
1,238 reviews20 followers
October 17, 2013
This is listed as book 2. Chronologically, it's book 1.

Apparently having an alcoholic and abusive father who gambles you away to a rapist is a "get out of jail free" card. Imagine that.

Our ungrateful wench was rude to H when he saved her arse on some criminal outpost (think Mos Eisley only with women being a rarity), stowed away on his ship. After he found her several days later (about the time he unloaded supplies at a Shielder colony whose location was secret), she...seduced and drugged him, dumped him in a space ho house, stole his ship, went to a large space port to pick up contraband (because apparently she was too stupid to realize that he'd report his ship stolen). He caught up with her about the time authorities did. She was dressed as a space ho - an apparently protected profession - so got away. Her contraband was found though and HE was arrested for it. So was her sister. He used the sister as a shield to keep one of her associates from skipping out with the kid - and sent her a message to trade herself for the girl. His buddy got him out of jail.

For the next week or so, all was sortof calm - she didn't do anything else stupid (well, other than contact someone she had a contract with while he was ill). Then... she figured out he was a bounty hunter. Oh NOOOSSS!!!! So she stole his ship *again*. He tracked her down, with a lot of urgency, and tried to warn her - in spite of the fact that one of her associates had trussed him up like a turkey and they (she included) were threatening him. Did our stupid biaaach listen? Oh NOOOO. Of course not. She took off to pick up some highly desirable contraband *that everyone, including her rapist and the man who'd wiped out a colony she'd seen the aftermath of was after*. Oh, she admitted to herself near the end that she'd abused his trust. Too little, too late.

H was a nice guy, to the point that I started questioning his intelligence. He felt bad for her, even after everything she did to him. I wanted him to, after helping her little group of abused females get settled, leave her there. Let her stew on how her actions had driven him off.
Profile Image for Monique Atgood.
91 reviews1 follower
May 1, 2012
Moriah is a smuggler. Her customers, the Leors will kill her if she doesn’t deliver a certain shipment of highly valued ore. Problem is, her space ship has been stolen, she’s been injured, she’s stranded on a planet light years from help and worse yet, every wicked pirate in the quadrant is zeroing in to hijack her stolen ore shipment.

Sabin is a bounty hunter. Moriah’s father and Pax, the man who assaulted her and held her in slavery for years, were also bounty hunters. She’s not a fan of the profession or the evil men who dash about the galaxy in their spaceships seeking the money to be had for retrieving often innocent people for the evil overlords called the “Controllers”.

Not realizing Sabin’s true profession, Moriah stows away on Sabin’s ship. Moriah is discovered when Sabin makes a covert stop to deliver relief supplies at a secret colony of Shielders. The Shielders are being hunted down and destroyed by the Controllers, so the Shielders would kill Moriah if Sabin leaves her at the secret colony world. Instead of having her executed, Sabin is forced to conceal her and then makes plans to take her to a healer to have her memories of the colony erased.

Along the way, they grow to like each other.
{Despite the fact SPOILER ALERT that Moriah steals Sabin’s ship, and dumps him at a brothel stark naked.}

There is also a delightfully humorous sub story of Lionia a warrior gal who loves to cut up men, that falls in love with the geeky space ship mechanic.

This is first and foremost a science fiction romance. The characters are flawed, and deep. I LOVED them. They are like the core couple of a soap opera and they also show up in the other Shielder series books. I loved the way the author helped Moriah get around her emotional wall regarding men due to her mistreatment at the hands of the slaver and the chemistry between Sabin and Moriah fairly sizzled.

This is a good stand alone novel. But go ahead and order all the Shielder books.
Profile Image for Lover of Romance.
3,733 reviews1,129 followers
March 25, 2013
I have loved reading this series, its the first futuristic romantic series that I have read, and I am definitely looking forward to reading the rest of the series. Moriah, grew up with no freedoms of her own, and had to learn to take care of herself and her younger sister Celie. When she is free from her father and a man he sold her to that used her for his own pleasures, she sets up a small colony of women. But she knows she has to find a way to support them. Which is where she ends up meeting Sabin. Sabin finds himself at Giza's, a hellhole of a bar. Where he comes face to face with Moriah, who is a dark red haired beauty. When a fight breaks out, with Mariah in the middle, and he saves her life and heals her wounds on his ship, she is far from grateful. All Mariah can think about is the smuggling deal that has to go through no matter the cost. Sabin doesn't trust Mariah, any futher than he can throw her. But as they journey together, passions between them ignite, and despite the fact that Mariah has despised the sexual act, there is a sensual fire that flames up that she can't bother to deny. But there is a secret about Sabin's life work that may tear apart what they have built.

I truly loved this book, there were so many times that I laughed the whole way through. Both characters Sabin and Mariah are stubborn to a fault, and too much alike that tempers flare out without the slightest provocation. It was enjoyable to see how they slowly get drawn together, despite the danger and intrigue that surrounds them. From the first page to the last page, I was thoroughly entertained. There were a few moments, where I got frustrated with the dialogue, since there were moments in the book that seemed too similiar. But other than that, I truly enjoyed this book, it was well written, with witty dialogue between Sabin and Moriah. The passion of course was very heated and will make your reading glasses fog up!!! I am looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Profile Image for SammieSue .
507 reviews15 followers
January 21, 2014
Moriah is a smuggler. It is how she survives. Someone stole her ship but she has things to get and deliver or her life may be forfeit. So when Sabine comes to her aid in a bar on a dangerous planet and takes her to her ship for her injury's to be tended to she misses her ride off the planet so she unknowingly to him, hitches a ride on his ship. Sabine and Moriah go back and fourth. She steals his ship, he catches her. More then once. When she finds out what he is she wants nothing to do with him as she has had bad experiences with men in his profession.

Sabine is a Shadower. A Bounty hunter. But he cannot seem to bring himself to take in the little thief that keeps stealing his ship. He was not looking for romance but once he has seen Moriah he can't get her out of his head. When he finds out what had happened to her he wants to find the person who hurt her and avenge her. Will Moriah be able to see past what Sabine does for a living. Will Sabine be able to see past what Moriah does for a living and the fact that she keeps stealing his ship and give in to love?

I was in the Dollar Tree one day and I seen this book. I said hey you can't beat a dollar so I got it and read it in one sitting. I thought this book was great! I love how protective Moriah is of her sister and the fact that she will do anything even sacrifice herself to keep her safe. I think that the author wrote a great character with Sabine. I had to laugh when he got bested by a group of women. I definitely recommend reading this. You may have to look for this one in stores though or order the paperback version through Amazon.

'Read and Reviewed by LSK Sweetheart Reviews'
Profile Image for Samantha Woods.
167 reviews27 followers
February 8, 2014
Moriah is a smuggler. It is how she survives. Someone stole her ship but she has things to get and deliver or her life may be forfeit. So when Sabine comes to her aid in a bar on a dangerous planet and takes her to her ship for her injury's to be tended to she misses her ride off the planet so she unknowingly to him, hitches a ride on his ship. Sabine and Moriah go back and fourth. She steals his ship, he catches her. More then once. When she finds out what he is she wants nothing to do with him as she has had bad experiences with men in his profession.

Sabine is a Shadower. A Bounty hunter. But he cannot seem to bring himself to take in the little thief that keeps stealing his ship. He was not looking for romance but once he has seen Moriah he can't get her out of his head. When he finds out what had happened to her he wants to find the person who hurt her and avenge her. Will Moriah be able to see past what Sabine does for a living. Will Sabine be able to see past what Moriah does for a living and the fact that she keeps stealing his ship and give in to love?

I was in the Dollar Tree one day and I seen this book. I said hey you can't beat a dollar so I got it and read it in one sitting. I thought this book was great! I love how protective Moriah is of her sister and the fact that she will do anything even sacrifice herself to keep her safe. I think that the author wrote a great character with Sabine. I had to laugh when he got bested by a group of women. I definitely recommend reading this. You may have to look for this one in stores though or order the paperback version through Amazon.

'Read and Reviewed by LSK Sweetheart Reviews'
18 reviews
April 4, 2015
I was upset to find this book is actually the first one.

I liked the story but was disappointed to find the book was telling about the characters in the first book. Otherwise it was ok.
Profile Image for Red Head.
27 reviews4 followers
April 29, 2010
Really liked this book. Had lots of action packed adventure. Good story line and great romance scenes. If you like to read futuristic romance type novels you gotta read this one.
Profile Image for Pat.
154 reviews
May 10, 2014
Another good book, very enjoyable.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews

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