Dark Comes The Morning

A Journey of Soulmates #13

by Melissa Good

Xena and Gabrielle have settled contentedly in Amphipolis, and are enjoying their new baby daughter, Doriana.
Or are they? Life is, as Gabrielle well knows, a series of trade offs. To achieve one thing, you often have to give up something else.

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About the author

Melissa Good is a full time network engineer and part time writer who lives in Pembroke Pines, Florida with a handful of lizards and a dog. When not traveling for work, or participating in the usual chores she ejects several sets of clamoring voices onto a variety of keyboards and tries to entertain others with them to the best of her ability. She is a prolific author of many published novels and a very well-known author of Xena fan fiction. You can find other info at www.merwolf.com.
Melissa “Missy” Good is the Royal Academy of Bards 2005 Hall of Fame Author and the winner of 2008 Hall of Fame Lifetime Achievement Award.

Reviews

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

She'd left home, conquered nations, traveled the world... All so she could end up, sitting around a fire not fifty paces from where she was born, becoming at last the hero she'd started out to become all those years ago.

Having now diverged completely from the storyline in the TV show, Good brings - via an epic war novel - a satisfying end to the trajectory of Xena's quest for redemption. Good still has plenty of places for Xena and Gabrielle to go, and much epic adventure yet awaits them, but here she's wrapped up the TV storyline thematically, and so is free to completely explore her own vision from now on.

The only unsatisfying thing in this book is that Xena has not one but two chances to kill Andreas earlier on in the story, which would have saved countless lives... yet it doesn't happen. It's just a little sloppiness on Good's part that this doesn't feel justified, at least not fully. But hey, I don't mind, because who would want to read an anticlimactic 200-page novel when they could read a really exciting 1500-page one?

[Terry Ford · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much deeper glimpse into Xena's dark side in an extended war that threatens to take her and Gabrielle under with it. Cute interactions between the parents and Dori - who is a wonderful mix of the 2, precocious and always looking for trouble (and finding it). This was one of my least favorites so far, only in that I like to think of Xena more in light of the show - and the redemption and growing light she exudes with Gab's influence. Gabrielle shows her true self - fierce warrior, ever-present defender of Xena, yet deeply affected by the violence and darkness that threatens all of Greece unless they succeed. The weight of the responsibility weighs heavily on both their shoulders. Some very brutal and graphic descriptions of the attrocities done in the name of war by Andreas and his minions, difficult to stomach since they involved children - just a fair warning.