The Fall
Wagers are flying in Sir Phillip's castle. Can Phillip's virgin daughter, Juliane, a legendary beauty who can render a man impotent with an icy glance, be successfully wooed by Ulrich of Caen, "Lord of Nothing," a charming but landless knight whose fame as a lover has spread throughout the kingdom? Juliane and Ulrich amuse themselves with verbal sparring and blatant seduction, but just as the reader thinks this is a simple tale of flirtatious jousting, things turn complicated as Dain puts political intrigue, scandalous secrets, and Machiavellian moves into play. A banal courtier casts off his bland facade to become the villain, and even the priest isn't the saintly man of the cloth he appears to be. Dain deftly blends humor, adventure, suspense, and pathos in this medieval tale of a woman who's fighting to keep her independence and her lands and a man who comes to realize that she is much more important than her property. Together they discover that, when it comes to love, there's no such thing as a sure bet.Shelley MosleyCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved