Earth has become a post-apocalyptic water world, filled with violence and shadowy intrigue. Human and supernatural beings once thought fantasy live on the slopes of the Alps, in floating cities and even in the old cities beneath the waves. The Empire and its corrupt Emperor rule over everyone. And everything...

With her special gift for rendering all things "tech" inoperable, Callie has appointed herself the Emperor's executioner. What she doesn't know is that only one man on the planet has the ability to kill him, and he's wallowing in grief and guilt for his failure to win the insurrection he led against the Emperor seven years ago.

Prince Edward feels he's responsible for the deaths of thousands, including his wife and unborn child, and now everyone around him wants him to fight again. He has enough to contend with, trying to find and destroy the source of the drumbeats pounding in his head. They drown out the screams of his wife, screams that keep his memory of her alive and serve as his penance for so gravely having failed her.

When his search leads him to New Vegas and a stunning exotic dancer calling herself Boudicca, Edward knows her vendetta against the Emperor has no possibility of succeeding. Facing his uncle would get Callie killed, and he can't stand back and let that happen. She silences the cacophony in his head for the first time in seven years. As her life fast becomes precious to him, he realizes that it's time to enact his own plan. To succeed, it will take Callie, Carver and Nalina, Libby and Swann, Angelica and Jack, and the tech wizard George. He'll need Swann's fellow Mer, Libby's slum friends, all the surviving war vets, even Angelica's former harem of dissidents. Everyone must rise up and fight, to bleed once again for Prince Edward and the destiny that prophesy says awaits them all.

Consistent in plot and characterizations, Cat Marsters's Empire series has been a pure pleasure to read. This fourth installment is another emotional roller-coaster rider that nicely completes the ongoing storyline while finally revealing what kind of supernatural being Prince Edward really is. And it absolutely blew me away!

Dawn Rising is the most erotic of the four books with scenes of oral and anal intercourse, m/f/m ménage, m/m sex, and group sex. However, every sex scene is sensual, enthralling, believable and complimentary to the storyline. Ms. Marsters has packed more thrilling action and intrigue into one erotic tome than I've ever seen. Callie may be a whore, but there's a method to her debauchery. She's another of Ms. Marsters' strong, determined heroines, and Edward's another tortured hero who's definitely not the coward some think he is.

With this series Ms. Marsters has truly come into her own. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she ended up sooner than later at one of the mass market publishing houses. She definitely has the talent.

Reviewed by: Merrylee