It’s been a long time since I read a book so tiresome that I had to play games to get myself through it. With its colonial American setting, I had high hopes for Black Eagle, but unfortunately, I found myself having to line up Jelly Bellies so that I could eat one every time Black Eagle said “Nyoh, yes,” or someone called him “Sir Eagle” or…you get it. It was a train wreck.

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In the plus column, this is a Native American romance set in a time and place where one could believe in at least a somewhat happy ending for the couple. The author also wrote a really interesting historical note that taught me some new history. Then there is the book itself. Written in an oddly stilted style, it is nearly impossible for the reader to really feel connected with the story, no matter how hard one tries.

The book opens with a prologue that impressed me with its oddly old-fashioned tone and then left me wondering what the point of it really was. The prologue gives Black Eagle an excuse to believably cross paths with the heroine later on and gives readers a stupendous info dump, but beyond that it really doesn’t move the main plot all that much. At any rate, the focus then switches to Marisa Jameson, the ward of a prominent man in Albany. Marisa is an oddly happy and well-adjusted young lady, considering that she has spent her life being raised by pure eeeeeevil.

Marisa overhears her step-uncle speaking of a plan to burn out farmers and then call in their loans with the goal of forcing them into indentured servitude. (Obviously, he’s a real prince of a guy.) We then learn that not only has he done this before, but he’s also a pervert who molests servant girls, a thug who employs all kinds of crooks, and he also has some kind of creepy fixation on Marisa. Eek. But – all will soon be well. After all, Marisa just has to tell her step-uncle how wrong he is and then, given that Marisa apparently exudes purity (and probably burps rainbows while little blue birds chirp merrily around her), he will see the errors of his wicked ways and all will be well. Oh, and he will also let Marisa and her beloved maid go on a trip across dangerous territory inhabited by one of the hostile tribes to visit someone in New England.

Before leaving Albany, Marisa meets Black Eagle and they are instantly affected by each other. The attraction appears so instantaneous that when he again makes an appearance at her home on the night of a ball, Marisa finds herself slipping out to speak with him. Even though she tries to emphasize the difference in their stations, she rather ruins the effect of this by flirting with Black Eagle. It’s obvious that it’s love at first sight and to prove it, that very night, Marisa slips out again to get Black Eagle to deflower her. And with great formality, he speaks to her about how she wants to “engage in a night of love.” It gets really romantic when he tells her that they should, “make ourselves as comfortable as possible” before they proceed to get it on. Inside a tree.

And it all just keeps going from there. Black Eagle develops the annoying habit of saying the word, “Nyoh” and then explaining that it means “yes” – just in case readers didn’t figure this out on the zillions of occasions that it arose before. There is a suspense plot of sorts that has a very obvious solution and an eeeeeevil villain, both of which inexplicably evade the main characters for way too long. The relationship between Marisa and Black Eagle gets more serious, but this feels oddly anticlimactic because these two have little personality and zero chemistry. And then there’s the language. This book is written in an overly formal style and the author tells a lot more than she shows. The writing also suffers from an addiction to overdescription. For instance, we get two paragraphs about Marisa’s slippers, ending with the observation that, “Luxuries were too commonplace for her to contemplate their origins, or sigh over their costs.” All this just to get her out of bed and into her slippers!

To avoid spoilers, I’ll let intrepid readers discover the second half of Black Eagle for themselves. More choppy plotting, weak writing, and a strangely abrupt ending await. And if that’s not enough to whet your appetite, there’s also some psychobabble straight out of the 21st century when Black Eagle and Marisa finally start to discuss the differences between their two worlds. I’m always on the hunt for a good colonial American story, but this one just doesn’t hit the spot.