Review: Well, this book certainly provokes a response . . .
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 2, 2013
Cheesy cover aside, I found this book well worth the read and recommend it for people who can enjoy a historical novel with some errors and/or enjoy a novel with romance elements that is not a typical "romance novel."In delving into the three star and less reviews for this book, it seems that most negative reviewers fall into one of those two camps.I'm not an expert on the time, but I concede that this book could have been better researched.  Yes, the characters wouldn't have lived in castles.  Basically, the author has written a medieval-themed novel as a prequel Arthurian tale.  If you can live with that, then download away.  If that is going to annoy you, you really should avoid this book (there is no judgment in that statement by the way, I can think of lots of things in historical novels that would annoy me -- this just isn't one of them).The other thing that seems to provoke readers about this novel is that the author uses many of the familiar tropes of the romance novel, but then sets them on their head or doesn't deliver what the reader is conditioned to expect.  It's a world of rape and brutality and Elsbeth is literally a spoil of war, and not always in a sexy, bodice-ripper way.  There are multiple rapes, including the rape of children and the violation of dead women.  Again, only an individual reader is going to know how they will feel about this.  If you're expecting a sexy-time romance read where the male hero is transformed due to his love of the heroine, then you really should avoid this book.All warnings aside, I thought this was a really interesting read.  I enjoyed that I wasn't sure what to expect from one minute to the next.  Although there were moments where I was pulled out of the story by something that seemed a bit anachronistic, I think Sullivan created a fascinating and detailed world for readers here.  It's a world of ambiguity, full of people who behave decently in one moment and brutally in another.I would recommend this book for people who are looking for something out of the ordinary and aren't going to necessarily hate a book due to the stuff mentioned above.*** Author, if you're reading these reviews, PLEASE consider changing the cover.  It's cheesy and doesn't even match the description of the main character.