Lieutenant Colonel Shanee Iphito has been promoted to Primary Riezell Guardian because of her skills as a warrior.  While she’s recovering from an attempt on her life, her commanding officer sends her on a vacation / mission on a lush planet.  She is supposed to find out if Ailyn Harmattan, heir to a dukedom, still lives despite being in a starship crash and possibly being experimented on by cruel scientists.  If Ailyn still lives, she is supposed to try to convince him to return to his home planet.  Shanee takes the mission and quickly discovers Ailyn is alive, and incredibly attractive. 

Ailyn Harmattan survived horrific experiments at the hands of evil people, and is now a Reaper.  He carries a parasite that gives him incredible powers and a long lifespan, but at great cost.  He doesn’t want to return to his hometown, but for Shanee, he’ll do anything.  Will the people conspiring to have Ailyn’s powers for themselves tear Ailyn and Shanee apart?

My description doesn’t do a very good job of explaining Hunger’s Harmattan because there was just so much going on.  Unfortunately, most of the time I wasn’t really sure what it was.  I think this is one of those books that you really need to read some of the others in the series first (even though this wasn’t mentioned on the book’s page at Ellora’s Cave), because I was very confused.  Terms were used that were never adequately explained, people were mentioned as being important but I had no idea why they were important, and people were referred to by many different names and titles, which often left me wondering who the heck they were talking about.  Heroine Shanee was an Amazeen (like an Amazon) warrioress, and as such was very strong.  I liked her strength, and how she didn’t need to rely on a man, but at times she was a bit too arrogant for my taste.  Ailyn was the perfect example of a tortured hero—very alpha but terribly wounded after his experiences in prison.  There were a lot of other characters, some of which added comic relief and/or furthered the story’s action, but many of which left me feeling as if I had missed something really important.  The whole parasite-that-gives-powers thing was actually pretty icky, and the shape-shifter element didn’t go anywhere.  Hunger’s Harmattan had a lot of really interesting elements, but overall I spent too much time confused to recommend this one.  If you’ve read previous installments of the series, however, you will probably enjoy this book.