Review: Very good continuation of the series :D
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 19, 2013
4 starsThis was a very good story. I liked it but it left me with a lot of conflicting emotions at the end. Circe was a really cool heroine and I liked her. I liked Lahn most of the time but every time I liked him he went and messed up again...Circe is from our world (from Seattle to be exact) and discovers herself suddenly in a pen in a strange place. She discovers that she's a captive of a savage tribe that has a "hunt" in which the warriors chase down women, rape them and then keep them as their wives. Needless to say, Circe was in for a bad time. Luckily (when compared to some of the other prospective husbands) Circe caught the eye of the King and he decides to take part in the hunt.Lahn is a warrior. He's been raised as such since the age of 5 and became King of his people through the force of his sword. He's never had tenderness in his life and no relationships to speak of, other than the brotherhood with his fellow warriors and even that's guarded as any weakness would be noted and most likely exploited. When Lahn sees Circe he decides to take part in the wife hunt and when he has to fight her to claim her during the hunt, he's convinced that she's his golden warrior queen. He takes her against her will be sees it as claiming his treasure.Things don't go well for the first few days. Lahn keeps forcing himself on Circe (no, there isn't explicit details. You just know it happened) and she falls in to a depression. When she's pulled out of it and tries to come to an understanding with Lahn (regardless of language barriers) for some reason he begins to be gentle with her. When he takes her to bed he begins to coax pleasure from her instead of just taking her against her will, Circe isn't sure how to handle it because he tends to be sweet to her at times and brusque to her at other times. It takes her time to realize that he doesn't show tenderness as well because he isn't experienced with it and needs to learn how to show it.Lahn and Circe make halting progress. He can be sweet at times but other times he shows some real  horrid behavior that I have a hard time with even with his warrior background and his people's traditions. Circe makes friends with some of the local women (finding someone that speaks English helps things) and starts to try to accept her new husband and her new life. This isn't always easy since many of their traditions are not at all like what she's used to from our world... They own slaves, rape is obviously allowed in certain circumstances, the men are allowed to brutalize their wives and no one does anything about it, the nation makes it's money off of raiding and pillaging of the neighboring countries, the warriors keep sex slaves that they have no problem cheating on their wives with...and that's not even all of the issues Circe learns to deal with. And all the while she has to come to terms with the fact that she's probably never going home.Regardless of the issues Circe has to deal with in her new life, she does come to love it. She falls for Lahn as they learn each other better and learn to communicate. She makes friends and gains the support and love of her people, she gets a white tiger as a pet (So cool! I've always dreamed of that!) and learns her way in her new existence. She also finds out that she has magic in this world. Since she doesn't know how to control it, it tends to come out with her feelings, storms when she's mad or upset & flowers sprouting when she's happy. She has some thoughts of trying to learn how to use her magic to go home but soon forgets all about that when she realizes she's in love with Lahn.Things are actually going pretty well for Lahn and Circe when the King of the Midlands shows up threatening to invade if Lahn doesn't give Circe to him. The threat is handled but when Lahn finds out that Circe isn't originally from his world he freaks out and says cruel things that breaks her heart. She's so miserable that she ends up unknowingly sending herself back to Seattle and away from Lahn. Things happen and Lahn and Circe are reunited and Lahn does everything he can to get Circe to forgive him for his actions that drove her away. With some time, Lahn gets Circe to forgive him and they have their HEA. I wish we'd gotten a bit more after their reunion but it was still a very nice ending.Overall, I thought the story was very good. While she made some mistakes, I liked Circe a lot. Lahn had his moments but he didn't move me like I'd have wished. I liked him but he had too many total jerk moments for me to go deeper than like. I did really like the story though and the characters were interesting. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series and regardless of any issues I had with this book it's still a very good story and I'd recommend it. :D