Warrior of the Isles
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TEST

It feels mean to criticize author Debbie Mazzuca’s sophomore effort, in the same way you’d give a little latitude to a charming but obviously new waiter. Unfortunately, while Warrior of the Isles can be charming, it does deserve a great deal of criticism.

The story begins well. Aidan MacLeod has an illegimate younger brother, Lachlan, who was sired by a Fairy. Although Aidan loves Lachlan, Lachlan’s birth cursed the MacLeod clan. Indirectly due to Lachlan, Aidan’s parents are both dead, his mother’s reputation is smirched, the clan is destitute and constantly embattled, and Aidan is exhausted with care and worry from having to assume responsibility for Lachlan and the rest of the clan at too young an age. Because of all this, Aidan adamantly despises anything involving the Fae.

The heroine, Syrena, has big problems of her own. As the daughter of the Fae king, she is expected to have powerful magical gifts, but alas, she has very little. She relies on her maidservant to perform any feats of magic needed, while Syrena pretends the deeds are her own. Life for females in general is very hard in the Enchanted Isles, due to extreme sexism amongst the inhabitants, but for the disappointingly weak daughter of the king, disrespect is constant. When the king dies unexpectedly, Syrena expects to gain the throne. But she learns that a male is supposed to inherit, and that she’ll have to share rule with her stepmother if she’s to rule at all. Then she discovers that she has a younger brother born in the mortal world that she’ll need to go and retrieve so that he can inherit instead.

Here’s where the plot goes awry. It’s like the new waiter I referenced earlier slipping and dropping a loaded tray; there’s a lot of messy stuff that gets thrown around in all directions. Syrena is visited by the spirit of her dead father and is advised that he was murdered and she is expected to punish the Fae responsible. So the book is a murder mystery She also has to deal with her pushy, overbearing stepmother who wants to change the sexist philosophy of their land by ramrodding new laws into place while she has power to do so. So the book is about overcoming mysogeny. Then Syrena has to travel to the mortal world to retrieve her brother, where she meets Aidan and Lachlan. She’s unaware until their meeting that the brothers have extreme prejudice against the Fae. So now the story is about dealing with prejudice. Oh, and Syrena and Aidan are hot for each other, so there’s a love story as well. And then we are informed that Syrena has a betrothed she didn’t know about, there’s an evil society that has obtained a grimoire and is raising the “dark Fae,” whoever they are, and other Fae visiting the mortal world have disappeared, and Lachlan started a war with another clan and they want him dead, Syrena gets stuck on the mortal world, and oh yeah, there’s a chick married to one of Aidan’s friends who is a time traveller from modern day. And for the finale there’s a case of eavesdropping and a big mis to round out the package. Seriously? Phew!

Aside from all the plot problems, two things really bothered me. First was the faux Scots, as in “Ya ken that, doona ye?” That’s almost always a big distraction. And second was Syrena’s Fae flying steed. He has one gimpy wing, but still manages to fly. I didn’t know whether to be nauseous from the aw-how-cute or to waste my time pondering the physics.

As ironic as it is to mention now, there are some positives. First – and this is probably damning with faint praise – this is not the worst book I’ve ever read. It’s obvious the author has a vivid imagination, and if the plot hadn’t gotten so out of whack I would have probably enjoyed this book a good deal more. There are some nice elements that didn’t get enough attention, such as the army of women that Syrena forms and trains to defend her kingdom while it is vulnerable with no clear leadership. Syrena makes some interesting friends in that situation, and I would have liked to learn more about them, but they were only mentioned a few times. The love scenes and dialogue weren’t completely unfortunate, but much of the writing could have been improved with some judicious editing and proofreading.

There is some potential here. It wasn’t fulfilled with Warrior of the Isles, but there is hope for future work from this author.

Reviewed by Wendy Clyde

Grade: D

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date: 16/06/11

Publication Date: 2011/05

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Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

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