Review: Well Developed, Interesting Characters and Story
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 20, 2013
Love this series and this author.  I haven't read her other works, but this was the last of this series that I read and oh how I wish she would write more - pretty please! I read book 3 before this one, book 2 in the series, but that makes no difference with these really, though with this and the Wife, it is rather nice to have read Warrior Wife first.Ms. Domning excels at writing about the medieval time period and gives you a real understanding of the politics of the day, as well as the morals and the conditions women dealt with in their fragile standing in society.  The hero - Josce - is everything you want in a hero - strong, passionate, etc.  The heroine, Elianne, is rather non-traditional.  She taller than many men.  She's not considered beautiful, but Josce finds her so and a lot of the beauty he sees in her character and that colors it -- which was endearing and lovely.  Though in love Elianne's beauty does start to shine.All the characters in this novel are particularly interesting especially Elianne's half-brother Adelm.  Sir Adelm is one of the most remarkable characters I've read about in a historical romance ever as he does despicable things; however, the author let's us see him as a complex individual and not black and white - he has good qualities.  Even Elianne's father, while low of the low, we still see his vulnerability and while there's nothing to like he's not just another cardboard mean, bad guy.The unraveling of the mystery, which in general we the reader know fairly early, is done quite well.  Often the mysteries to be unraveled in historical romances are extremely simplistic and we have characters magically summarizing random pieces at the end and solving it all; whereas, the mystery is well plotted.So only negative - darn there's not a 4th and a 5th in this series.  We can only hope that perhaps Ms. Domning may visit some of the other knights that are mentioned in this series and bring forth more tales in this series.