Review: Liked but had issues
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 14, 2014
THERE ARE NO SPOILERS PER SE IN THE REVIEW, BUT IT COULD BE CONSIDERED SPOILERISH ABOUT SOME THEMES IN THE STORY AS I INTERPRETED THEM.I usually love Alex Beecroft's books, but I have read a review by somebody whose tastes I really trust months ago and  her review was the reason why I was hesitant to pick it up. I caved in eventually as you can see :-)Let's get something very important out of the way - I thought the writing was as beautiful as ever , I absolutely was transformed to another time and I did not feel that I was reading about the people with contemporary mentalities dressed up in the historical costumes, no these characters truly felt like people from different times. Of course there were things I could relate to them as one human being to another, but they did not think as my contemporaries. So the book definitely did for me what I want historical to do. I am not very knowledgeable about Saxons, and I have no desire to do even a brief fact checking, but since usually this author is very good with her research, I am going to take her on faith. Historical settings are definitely written with the air of authority.I also thought both guys' struggle to accept who they were inside and how it matched who they were outside was very well done. I really liked their love story. I still was not sure if in modern terms Wulfar was a transgender, or just wanted to be a submissive in bed, but who cares, I had a great deal of sympathy for him and Leondar.Basically the review which stopped me from getting the book said that at the end the book became too preachy in a Christianity saves the day kind of thing (paraphrase), except to me it did not come out of the left field at all, I thought the writer foreshadowed it very well. And to be honest, I would not have even minded Christianity saves the day thing, after all if the characters think so much about religion, one of them hear Saints, we hear references to Christ several times, it is clear to me that religion is a very important and real thing in their everyday lives. I would have been fine with it, really. I mean *it was* preachy for me, I just did not think that it came out of nowhere in the ending, I kind of saw it coming.No, what pissed me off the most is encompassed in this quote very well:"A mother. Saewyn is her name. I am sad to be her enemy, because I have always admired her. She has raised the land spirits against me - as she has every right to do so - and I am dogged by darkness at every step."Leofgar's look now was that of a sober and deep-minded man, experienced in such things. "I cannot remove curses", he said again. "But I can tell you this; that the land spirits have no strength that is not loaned to them by Almighty God, and I do not think there exists any curse in the nine words that is stronger than the word of Heavenly Kingdom's maker"In other words, Christianity is awesome, witchcraft, paganism is a terrible thing to behold the impression I got from this quote and not just from this quote, from this whole story. I thought that paganism was the sort of all evil, really - forget the connection with nature people used to have for centuries before Christianity kindly came along to save them, forget the Gods whom people prayed for those centuries. Now it is reduced to terrible curses that have no power anyway without almighty God. GAH.Basically what I am trying to say, paganism was something many people did before Christianity so kindly decided to erase it from existence. I am not a student of it (or of neo paganism or anything like that and neither I am a Christian. I am a non observant Jew), but it saddens me to see such a put down of something which was also there and many people observed it. .And no, I am not trying to tell the author how to write a story - I am expressing my dislike of the disdain to something old and powerful which came to me very strongly from the finished product.I cannot in good faith give this book less than four star though, because this is something I did not like - not something that did not work for me in the narrative, it worked well there (small distinction but distinction I usually try to make)