This book is like eating a piece of dark chocolate when you are dieting – you know it is not good for you, but you cannot help wolfing it down with guilty pleasure. After swallowing, you feel bad because you didn’t resist the temptation. I have recently suffered through a long streak of prim Regencies, so something hot was just what I craved. However, even with that craving satisfied, I cannot in all fairness recommend Conquer the Mist. There are other hot books around that don’t leave you shaking your head every other page.

The king of Leinster has called Strongheart, a Norman knight, to his court to advise and train his troops. His daughter, Dara, sees danger in allowing Normans into Ireland, and does her best to repel him. Strongheart is a landless knight who calculates that marrying Dara would make him lord of Leinster. When Leinster’s enemies unite and attack, Dara and Strongheart are forced to flee to Wales to recruit forces to retake her homeland. During the flight, Strongheart’s tender courting moves Dara to lust and to love. Eventually, Strongheart manages to secure not only Leinster, but also peace for the war-torn country.

Dara is a spoiled warrior-princess who fears her passionate nature, and who has a complicated relationship with her absent mother. While her tendency to be contradictory detracts from the first half of the book, her fire comes into its own during the steamier second half. Strongheart, Roland de Clare, is a true knight, not only superb in battle but deft in the ins-and-outs of courtly love. And physical love, too. He is considerate of Dara and patient with her flares of temper and her fears. In my mind, his only quirk is his love of kittens, to the point where he would endanger his life to save one.

The tempo is very uneven. The first half is leisurely and sedate, with all the action crammed into the second half. Once things finally began to happen, though, it was an entertaining read. The spotlight is focused on Dara and Strongheart to the exclusion of all else, including the descriptions that would have provided a feel for the world they lived in. The phrase “historical wallpaper” has been used in relation to the backdrop an author provides for her characters, but the historical framework for Conquer the Mist is so sparse, it cannot hold up the drywall, much less wallpaper.

This brings us to the main problem of the book. During the first third, the count of avoidable mistakes rose to an average of one every three pages – glitches that one afternoon at a good library would have prevented. For instance, what language did the Irish, the British, and the Normans speak? Why, English, of course, didn’t everyone? I’ve seen that faux pas from other American authors before, thank you so much. It baffles me that an experienced author would chose to set a story in a time and place about which she has such scanty knowledge, but apparently did not even bother to research. So, we have a book that provides little feel of time and place, and much of what it does provide, is wrong.

If you’re looking for some hot sex and couldn’t care less what you’re reading as long as the hero and heroine stay in focus, this could be the book for you. It wasn’t for me.