My Champion
Grade : D+

I don’t know how many female entrepreneurs there were in medieval England, but I bet they were smarter than Linet de Montfort, the wool merchant heroine of My Champion by Glynnis Campbell.

The first thing Linet does is publicly humiliate an evil Spanish pirate. Duncan de Ware, a nobleman, sees the incident and instantly vows that he must protect the beautiful merchant from the Spaniard’s inevitable vengeance. But Duncan is so eligible that can’t go anywhere without unmarried women flinging themselves at him, so he disguises himself as a gypsy and begins following Linet around. Various silly hijinks ensue, which culminate in Duncan’s accidentally (oops) destroying Linet’s entire stock of wool. Linet tells Duncan to go away, and as soon as he does, she is kidnapped by the Spaniard.

She is taken out to sea, where the Spaniard has numerous horribly vile plans for her. Duncan sneaks on board, where he proceeds to tell a number of different, conflicting lies: that he is a Spanish crewmember (didn’t anyone wonder why they’d never seen him before?), that Linet has the pox, that the King of France wants to kill Linet, that he is Linet’s French captor (then why are they on a Spanish boat?), that he wants to have Linet himself before he gives her to the King of France (so she doesn’t have the pox after all, but then what’s to prevent the entire crew from taking turns with her?)

Everyone immediately believes whatever Duncan tells them. Soon the Spaniards allow Duncan to take Linet to a sumptuous cabin to have his way with her, while they watch and listen through spyholes. There follows a forced seduction scene that I found extremely unpleasant.

All that is just the beginning, and it’s the worst part of the book. Most of the plot doesn’t make any sense at all. We’re supposed to see Duncan as a crafty trickster, but his actions don’t even remotely support that picture. For instance, his plan to free Linet from her captors includes throwing her overboard so that she can swim to Flanders (not any individual city, just Flanders), while he stays on board. He’ll meet up with her later when he disembarks. Magically that does in fact happen. He also plans to report the Spaniard to the “Flemish authorities.” Authorities?

Linet is feisty and angelically beautiful. I could have lived with that. But she’s also a snob who constantly consoles herself with her distant connection to nobility. She condescends to Duncan, once tossing a coin into the dirt when he does her a service. She promises herself, “if she ever got out of this alive, she’d never again even speak to a commoner outside her own servants.” Of course, in the fourteenth century this would not have been an unusual attitude, but it didn’t make me like her any better. And her actions immediately after Duncan pledges himself to her are shallow, cowardly, and despicable.

Once you get past the idiotic swashbuckling adventure plot and the initial stages of Linet and Duncan’s “I-hate-you-but-I-must-have-you” relationship, this book gets a lot better. Once it’s clear that they do love each other but must still wrestle with the barriers that separate them, the book becomes extremely romantic and moving. The ending contains some very clever twists and turns, and I enjoyed the way Duncan’s true identity was revealed.

My Champion is written in an enthusiastic, headlong style, and the author uses lots of bright colors and entertaining metaphors. This book made me want to thump my forehead against my desk, but Campbell does know how to write.

By the time I got to the end of this book I was having a good time, but the change came too late - what with Linet’s snarkiness and the way the plot doesn’t parse, I would never have finished it if I hadn’t been reading this book for review. I wonder if My Champion was Campbell’s attempt to bring back the epic-adventure type of historical romance. If you enjoy that sort of book you might like My Champion more than I did.

My Champion is the first book in Campbell’s Knights of De Ware series. I can’t recommend this book, but it shows just enough promise to make me think that the next one might be better.

Reviewed by Jennifer Keirans
Grade : D+

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date : November 4, 2000

Publication Date: 2000

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Jennifer Keirans

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