I was absolutely charmed by Glynnis Campbell’s novella in last year’s A Knight’s Vow anthology, so I was eager to try her writing in longer form. While My Hero is not the worst book I’ve ever read, it was something of a let down. It features a priest hero with whom I was never quite comfortable, an over-abundance of metaphor, and a generous helping of skanky villain sex.

Lady Cynthia’s elderly husband is dying, and her sorrow is genuine. The match was one of convenience for both parties, but Cynthia tended her ailing husband lovingly, and shared his bed (in passages that are perhaps too enthusiastically described). On his deathbed, her husband makes her promise that she will wed again, for love, but Cynthia isn’t sure she really intends to do it.

After her husband dies, Cynthia kicks out his long time Chaplain, an abbot who has always given her the creeps. Her husband left the abbot his own holding, but the abbot is completely unsatisfied, and longs to own Cynthia’s castle. He immediately begins plotting to oust her. His first weapon is the new chaplain, a monk named Garth de Ware. Garth’s ecclesiastical career has been notable for its utter lack of ambition, so the abbot figures that Garth can be easily molded to his will. Actually, Garth is from a noble warrior family, and he became a monk because of perceived personal failures involving a woman. When he enters Cynthia’s keep, he is currently under a vow of silence – it’s his penance for the sin of lust.

Naturally, the lust-prone priest is immediately taken with Cynthia, and in many ways she seems determined to torment him. She doesn’t particularly care that he’s a priest; not when she spends time with him and finds him so caring and attractive. She’s determined to help him embrace joy and truly experience life. Meanwhile, there is a major sub-plot involving Cynthia’s healing abilities. Her knowledge of herbs is astounding, and her ability to heal and divine correct treatments borders on the other-worldly (to the point that she frequently seems to be channeling twentieth century physicians, who have also helped out by imparting their knowledge of germ theory). To the peasants of the near-by village, Cynthia’s healing abilities are a godsend. To the abbot and his minions, they are proof that Cynthia’s powers are from the devil. Cynthia and Garth must fight the powerful forces arrayed against them, and overcome his loyalty to his vows, before they can become the third happy de Ware couple.

Most of my problems with the book centered around Garth. I’m not Catholic, but I still found something about the seduction of a priest unsettling. It’s certainly risky and different – I’ve never read a Medieval romance with a priest hero before – but I had a hard time picturing the hero as sexy and desirable. After all, he spends virtually half the book under his vow of silence, and most of the time he is praying for the power to overcome the temptation to have his way with Cynthia. He’s not what you’d call a proactive go-getter. And the situation that sends him scurrying for the monastery makes him seem pretty wimpy too.

There’s also the writing itself, which is purple during the love scenes, and dripping with metaphor everywhere else. Campbell seems to think that if one metaphor is good, twenty are even better. Sometimes a metaphor can strike just the right note, but when every event evokes a comparison to some natural phenomenon, it simply becomes distracting. The enthusiasm for description extends to sexual encounters that I would rather not have heard about, including a particularly vile one between the abbot and a servant girl who, er, “receives the holy spirit.” There’s also a graphic flashback to one of Garth’s previous sexual encounters that invoked a similar response.

Fortunately, the book is not entirely unlikable. The heroine is often charming, and affection for holy men aside, I liked her. And although her healing powers seemed a little too advanced, the reactions of others were very true to the period, and the accusations that people make against her are in keeping with the times. It’s nice to see a Medieval in which the local population is actually religious; the Church was a huge part of life that is often completely missing from romances. The book also gets a little better as it goes along. Towards the end, Garth succumbs to the inevitable attack on his virtue, and things pick up from there.

Still, the eleventh hour improvement was not quite enough to save the book; it’s just not one I would recommend. If you’d like to try Glynnis Campbell, I would start with her story in A Knight’s Vow instead.