TEST
Reading this book is the fictional equivalent of watching a particularly uninspired Rube Goldberg machine. The plot is so mechanical that I could nearly hear the wheels and ratchets moving it from point to point. And these aren’t new stops but so clichéd that the machine just seems to chug on by itself.
When Second Lieutenant Colt Prescott sees a bedraggled white woman in a Comanche camp, he rescues her because he once lived with the Comanche and knows how badly she’s been treated. Hannah Browley resists rescue since her son Grasshopper is still in the camp. Besides, Hannah knows that her Comanche husband Spider will be coming for her. Colt, Spider’s blood brother, also knows that the fierce warrior will want his only child-bearing wife back.
While Colt is taken with the stoic Hannah, he’s gotten himself engaged in a dumb-as-rocks moment to the fort commander’s daughter, the spiteful and shallow Olivia. She has set her sights on Colt as the most manly of the soldiers and plans to take the Texan from his home state and have her relatives set him up in the munitions business back East.
Gentry often makes reference to Texas men and women as bold, upstanding, and pretty much filled with any known virtue and even some traits like ruggedness which many wouldn’t necessarily consider a virtue.
Colt initially gets suckered in by Olivia’s beauty, but it isn’t too many pages later, he discovers he doesn’t care about beauty—even though Hannah isn’t ugly by any means—and he’d rather have a “real” Texas woman. Straightening out Colt’s love life and his protecting the fort from the Comanche warriors make up the bulk of the plot.
To give the minor characters a little color, Gentry has the kindly, old fort doctor say, “dag nab it” on virtually every page where he appears. Also, two-year-old precocious Grasshopper immediately takes a shine to Colt and they form a bond in less than a page.
As the story creaks from clichéd scene to clichéd scene, even Gentry’s glut of authentic Western detail starts to chaff. While it’s nice to know that she’s read up on the Second Cavalry and the Comanche, all the interesting bits and pieces go stale under Gentry’s stilted writing and heavy-handed plotting and characterizations.
What’s truly amazing about the author is that she’s been published over 30 times. For years I’ve dipped into reading a Gentry book now and again, believing that with time surely she’s become a better writer. In fact, there’s a theory of writing that says if people write enough, they will get better and better at it. So far Gentry disproves that theory.
Grade: D
Book Type: American Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 24/03/12
Publication Date: 2012/02
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.