Book Review: Midnight Crystal and Burning Lamp

I picked up these two books at my local library.  I received nothing in exchange for this review.

Midnight Crystal and Burning Lamp are books two and three of the Dreamlight Trilogy, written by Jayne Ann Krentz, either as herself, or under one of her pseudonyms.  In this case, Fired Up, which I think I reviewed earlier on, was written as JAK.  Burning Lamp was written as Amanda Quick, her historical romance pen-name, and Midnight Crystal was written as Jayne Castle, her futuristic pen-name.

These books are focused specifically on the Winters legend of the Burning Lamp, which basically states that a Winters male may be burdened with the Winters Curse, whereby he acquires multiple talents, and requires the services of a very powerful dreamlight reader to find and use the Burning Lamp to make his talents manageable, or he goes insane and dies badly.  In the trilogy, the dreamlight reader is always a woman, and the duo find they accomplish much more together than they do separately. 

Both of these books were good installments in the trilogy, and added some to the Jones/Winters universe.  Of the two, I preferred the second book, Burning Lamp, and I'm not sure why.  Perhaps it was because more useful information was revealed in this one, information that added to my knowledge base of this 'verse and set the stage for other Jones and Winters antics.  Maybe I just liked the characters better.  Or maybe it was because it was set on Earth.  Jayne Castle's futuristic stories in the universe are set on Harmony, a Class M planet (in Trek lexicon) where humans explored and expanded.  I have read a few of her stories of Harmony, and for me, they have been hit and miss.  I'm not sure if that's the Harmony backstory or her Castle style of writing.  Maybe this one, despite my enjoyment of the couple's story, just didn't hit me right.

At any rate, these were good reads.  Burning Lamp rates a solid Very Good and Midnight Crystal a solid Good.