The Last Twilight

A Dirk & Steele Novel

By: Marjorie Liu

Narrated by: Emma Lysy

“If you have yet to add Liu to your must-read list, you’re doing yourself a disservice.”—Booklist

“A fresh thrill for anyone in the market for an extraordinary romance.”—Publishers Weekly

Extraordinary is the word for the paranormal romance of New York Times bestseller Marjorie M. Liu—who broke exciting new ground when she created the Dirk and Steele Detective Agency. The unique security organization comprised of psychics, telekinetics, and extraordinary supernatural beings faces its biggest challenge in The Last Twilight, when a powerful shapeshifter must return to his African homeland to free a beautiful virus hunter held captive by maniacs plotting the murders of millions of innocents. Superstar author Christine Feehan says, “Anyone who loves my work should love Liu’s,” and the same goes for fans of Jeaniene Frost and Nalini Singh.

Disease, death, and torture do not say romance

“One had raised him. One had tortured him. The two were not so different.”
I hoped that setting this in Africa would bring amazing settings, unique new magics, and a lot of new supernatural creatures. Instead, the main focus of this book was on atrocities, past and present. There is a pervasive theme of kids and women in particular being horribly abused. Additionally, both MCs have torture-filled backstories.

The other depressing themes include the ravages of disease, betrayal, and enemies being all-around monsters (and not in the good monster kind of way). Unlike some of the other books in this series, there’s virtually no humor or lightness to balance the dark. There are no interludes where Riki and Amari get to have fun, take a break, or get to know each other outside of this horrid environment, so the instant connection and sex scenes didn’t work for me at all. There’s also very little involvement from the rest of Dirk and Steele. This made for a rather unpleasant romance.

On the mystery side, I’m just frustrated. This was basically just a repeat of book 5: the MCs being stalked, eventually captured, and threatened with all manner of depravity by the shadowy Consortium, which is doing their bad deeds because of reasons merely teased. Dirk and Steele is apparently incapable of doing any actual detecting and is forever ten steps behind, except for conveniently showing up at the end.
And, if The Broker keeps resurfacing, could we at least change things up, maybe make him more than just an ultra poop-canoe? Egads, the series arc is going nowhere.

Random nitpick: Riki, contrary to the cover art, has short hair and keeps herself clothed to hide scars. And, why not show a bare-chested Amari instead? Is it because they’re afraid showing a black MMC will turn people off?