Review: an enjoyable read with some minor issues
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 29, 2012
First off a major gripe that has nothing to do with the book itself. It appears the author has engaged in a very ham handed attempt at self promotion. At the time of this review there are 8 reviews, all 4 and 5 star. I don't actually have a problem with the 4 and 5 stars given the book as it is that good. However, two of the reviews were written by people with the same uncommon last name as the author, and of the 8 reviews, IIRC, all but one were their first book review. Very suspicious. And in this case there is no reason for it. The book is good enough on its own not to need the chicanery that often goes into the review system for self published books. So I would urge people seeing the suspicious nature of those reviews to overlook it. Quite frankly, I look at the reviews pretty closely before actually buying a book, and the pattern here would have turned me off. As a free book, I can just download it and toss it aside if it turns out to be bad (which happens to most of the free books I download), but when I spend actual money I look a little closer. For a $10 book, I am going to look REAL close.I got the book for free off a Kindle free book list I subscribe to. That price has since been set to $9.99. I think that is pushing it for a self published book from an unknown author. In fact, while I liked the book, I just would not have paid that much for it up front. I might not be willing to pay that for the sequel, but I have to admit I have been hooked so I may well have to. :)I noticed a few writing errors (grammar, spelling, etc.) here and there, but they are not frequent enough to get in the way of the story as often happens with self published authors.I was not real thrilled with the way the book used flashbacks to fill in the story. The author did do a good job of making the flashbacks consistent with the rest of the story, so I never found them confusing. I just thought there were too many of them more than anything else.The characters are consistent, believable, and well formed.  The characters in this book are not saints. They have major character flaws that get in the way. A couple of the female characters are portrayed as too good to be true to me, but you never know how they will turn out as we learn more about them in future sequels.This is historical fiction set in 12th century England telling the story of the Dawning barony. The author's synopsis of the book is pretty good so I won't try and improve on it. I don't know how historically accurate the portrayal of chivalry is. I enjoy reading books about this period of time, and from what I have read it appears to me that chivalry was as often as not discarded when it was inconvenient.I don't know if there were Moors in England in the 12th century serving as trusted servants to the nobles who were sending their knights to the middle east to attempt to recapture the holy land from Islam. This seems like an incredibly bad idea from an opsec perspective, but it may have been the case. A lot of the nobles really were the nutty control freaks this book portrays them as being, and may well have believed no mere servant would dare cross them.I am also not convinced there were any orientals in 12th century England giving away Samurai swords and teaching karate-like fighting techniques.The time line in the books seems a little off to me as well. It seemed like the rescue journey to the middle east was way too quick to have happened as the book portrays. And the idea that the knights could load up a few pack horses with enough supplies to last them all the way to the holy land and back is just silly. They are going to have to resupply multiple times along the way both directions.But, this is fiction, and good fiction at that, so I consider these to be minor quibbles. A book does not have to be perfect for me to enjoy it. And I did.