Purity: Pure & Tainted #1

I fear nothing. I feel nothing. -the Purist code

Purity
Evangeline Anderson
Pure & Tainted, book one
Kindle Edition, 348 pages
Published August 28th 2013 by Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
ASIN B00EUBGMB6

K is a fourth level Paladin and a servant of Purity—the holy nothingness she has been taught to revere and aspire to from childhood. Born on a sexless world from an artificial womb, K was fitted with a black mesh skinsuit at the tender age of nine. The suit nourishes and defends her from enemies and serves as her main weapon in the holy war her people have declared on the rest of the universe. It also eradicates even the slightest traces of emotion. Leading her purge squad in a never-ending mission to rid the universe of the Impure, K is accustomed to killing or enslaving everyone she meets.

That is, until she meets Boone.

Boone is a doctor and geneticist from Colossus—a heavy G world which has rendered the people who inhabited it larger and stronger than regular humans. He’s more than happy to stay on his own planet and do research—until his little sister is taken by Purists and delivered to the pshalite mines. Frantic to rescue her, he hatches a desperate plot—capture a Paladin and use the enemy pawn to gain access to where his sister is being held. K falls into his net—but not without a fight. When she is wounded in the battle, Boone is forced to cut off her skinsuit in order to save her life.

Now, removed from her comforting routine and separated from the parasitic suit, K is beginning to change. Her body is blossoming and her mind is opening. For the first time in her life she can feel…whether she wants to or not. In order to survive in her new environment she has to cooperate with Boone.

However, she soon finds that it isn’t just her body he holds prisoner…
but also her heart.

The cover of this book was done to perfection. That *is* K.

K is a Paladin and a Purist. They do not believe in emotion. They do not believe in touching. They train, they live, to purge the universe of the impure--that is, anyone not a Purist. Or enslave them.

Boone knows next to nothing of the Purists and is therefore left to trust Loki, his ship's Erian pilot, on how to handle their new prisoner. And well, Loki has theories. He's a manipulative bastard, too. Loki believes K shares some of the DNA of his people who are not only touch sensitive, but touch dependent.

When K begins to suffer from the loss of her suit, Loki screams that she's touch deprived and instructs Boone, having already touched her to tend her wound, to keep skin to skin contact with her.

And K does not do touching.

Recovered, she immediately tries to kill herself. Boone's touch has contaminated her beyond cleansing. Her people will purge her for it. It is only honorable that she save them the trouble.

Sexual tension attraction comes sloooow in this book. Boone's first impression of K likens her to Earth's hairless cat, asexual, and scrawny. Then he feels like a father with a child as he explains food to her for the first time in her life. A child that has never gone through puberty. Despite it all, little by little he begins to appreciate the womanly attributes she does possess.

That's when puberty sets in.

But by then, Boone knows he's falling for K and Loki has even managed to win me over. I didn't like the guy at first. Then Sweetie happened. And that homosexual fool owned that scene. XD

This book was AWESOME. I daresay it was even better than the Brides of the Kindred. Easy 5 stars. I couldn't put it down and ended up finishing long before I had intended to. Boone is easily the most laid back character I've ever read. He's also ready and willing to do whatever it takes for the people he loves. He's not above prostituting himself for the means to save his sister or, to save K, he's perfectly willing to fight, die, step aside, and even wait for her.

Book two, Tainted, was previewed at the end and follows Hesler, a former Paladin who has learned to command his suit as he travels back in time to gather the necessary antibiotics to save his best friend. He's only taken off his suit once since his escape from the Purists and depends largely upon it to damper both his emotions and raging sex drive. Ugh. Why time travel? Keep the suit. I like the idea of the suit.