Review: 3  stars.  I enjoyed it - a fun fantasy.  But I was frustrated with frequent foreign words not being translated.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 04 6, 2013
THE GOLDEN DYNASTY by Kristen Ashley.Don't expect a fully developed story as to plot.  Also you need to set aside serious thoughts about rape, slaves, and lack of women's rights.  It's meant to be a sexual fantasy, not a serious story.Modern day woman Circe is transported to a culture similar to Genghis Khan, the Mongol Horde, horse riding warriors.  They live in tents, travel, plunder, pillage and war on neighboring lands.  The leader Lahn is on horseback, chases her, grabs her and rapes her.  But soon he changes the rape to pleasuring her.  He's good at it, her body can't resist, and he's gorgeous.  Most of the book is about her relationship with Lahn and others in the community.  She begins a new life.  Sometimes the author was overly wordy with descriptions and repetition.  It could have been shortened.I liked the way they forgave each other at the end and then the short but really neat make-up sex. I loved the way he treated and loved his wife and babies.  He's swoon-worthy.  It's a very feel good ending.Some of the writing had me chuckling.  Note the words "type" and "ish" below.  There is no indoor plumbing.  They use chamber pots.  The heroine "wandered out of the bathroom type um... room."Two warriors are fighting.  The loser is beaten all over with one arm broken.  He "struggled to his healthy (ish) hand then got his knees under him."Here, I was not an office manager.  I was the Golden Warrior Queen and The Tigress and I was wearing a kickass outfit."SOME READERS WON'T LIKE rape, forced seduction, and hitting a woman.The good guys start with rape, but soon change to care, concern, love, and pleasuring their woman.  There is a bad guy who does not.  He beats, rapes, and abuses her so badly she wants to die.  That was hard to watch.Slaves are part of the story.  Warriors bring them from conquered peoples.  Circe is kind and generous to her slaves.  She calls them her girls.MY BIGGEST COMPLAINT - the foreign language.The author put a full length dictionary in the back of the book.  But it was frustrating, time consuming, and interrupting for me to do all the "curser, go to, typing, enter" to get there and back.  And getting back meant writing down the location I was at, so I could return to it.  So I spent a bunch of time to highlight the dictionary, copy it, edit it to make it readable, and print it.  Then frequently I would refer to my printed dictionary.  But that was time consuming because each time I had to look up several words.For some chapters, the author put translations at the end of the chapters.  That was worse.  In an ebook it's hard to find the end of the chapter and then get back to where I was.Toward the end of the book, the author occasionally put translations in italic right after the sentence.  I loved that!  That's the way to do it.  But she still continued to do many at the end of chapters.  In the Author's Note she said "In order not to disturb the look and flow of the book, I have not italicized this fictional foreign tongue."  I disagree.  I was repeatedly forced to leave the story to find the translations.  It hurt the flow.LACK OF EDITING:There were a handful of incorrect words and grammar.  For example: I vs me, road vs rode, were vs where.DATA:Narrative mode: 1st person Circe.  Kindle count length: 11,704 (793 KB) 421 pages.  Swearing language: strong.  Sexual language: strong.  Number of sex scenes: about 24.  Setting: unknown.  Copyright: 2011.  Genre: fantasy romance.