When I read the absolutely delicious prologue to The Lady of the Storm I thought perhaps I’d found an adult replacement for my childhood favorite, Tolkien. In it, the reader learns that the England of William the Conqueror has been taken over by seven mad elves. William himself has become a prize of sort, held…
Master of Torment by Karin Tabke is the most enjoyable historical romance I have read in some time. I liked it so much that I was sorely tempted to buy the first book in the series, Master of Surrender. Only the sorry state of my bank balance prevented me from doing so. The story had…
The time of the Norman Conquest is a setting rich with history. There is a built-in conflict between an invading conqueror hero and an indigenous heroine. Carol Townend puts a slight twist on these two prototypes, making them less stereotypical and giving them a nice external conflict. Lady Cecily isn’t your usual Saxon noblewoman. Her…
Lord of Seduction is a Medieval with a childhood friends storyline and a road trip thrown in for good measure. Each of those worked in the book’s favor, but while I was predisposed to enjoy it, it left me wanting and in the end I wish I’d liked it more. Six-year-old Lady Tanon Risande, goddaughter…
I discovered Margo Maguire last year when I read her two Victorian-set historicals. I enjoyed them enough to search for her backlist, but she wrote for Harlequin, which has notoriously low print runs, and so have had difficulty finding them. The Bride Hunt, a very good Beauty and the Beast story, is her first book…
Since I am normally a fan of Medievals and the tumultuous period immediately following the Norman Conquest has always been a favorite of mine, I was excited about reading Sara Bennett’s latest romance. Unfortunately, while Bennett is generally a very good wordsmith, her main characters never quite came alive for me, ultimately resulting in a…
The Winter Mantle is by turns fascinating, brutal, and romantic. The writing is consistently top-notch, the historical details are accurate and thorough, and the characters are flawed in an intriguing way. It also reminded me completely of why I started reading much more romance (and much less historical fiction) nearly ten years ago. As much…
The Wolf and the Dove challenges the very boundaries of love and war and proves there lays but a fine line between conquered and conqueror. Norman knight and victor, Wulfgar easily ousts cruel Ragnor and takes authority over Darkenwald and the beauty who possesses a provocative courage. Courage, he believes, that is rarely matched by…
For a time, I could feel the mist on my face, smell the clean, cool air of Scotland, and hear the voice of the bard as he spun his tales. The sheer beauty of the legends, beliefs, and majesty of Scotland jump from the pages of this book. Very rarely does a book absorb me…
The conquering dark Norman warrior marrying the fair Saxon maiden by order of the King is not a new story, and despite a plot that could have come alive, this book sinks under leaden characters and much predictability. The story opens with William the Conqueror plotting to marry one of his knights to the heiress…