this review originally ran on August 5, 2000 I know an author is really talented when she makes me enjoy a book with a premise that I basically dislike. By Possession is a medieval romance about a knight and a woman who was born a serf, bound to his lands. Though her status as a…
I don’t require pinpoint historical accuracy, but I have a hard time getting into a book if people keep doing and saying things that are completely out of character for a period. A 15th-century legendary Robin Hood-like figure with a 1930s radio serial name like the Midnight Shadow? A heroine named Bria, a future noblewoman,…
I have been glomming Ruth Wind/Barbara Samuel for a while. The results have been quite successful, but locating her full-length historicals as written under her real name has been difficult. I searched longest for A Bed of Spices, the book I had been most eager to lay my hands on, since it is one of…
Dark Sapphire, Lisa Jackson’s new medieval romance, has a good sense of its time period and a memorable villain. Sadly, those are the only good things I can say about it. Bland characters and bad writing made this book a chore to finish. Sheena and Keegan met as adolescents when their fathers, who loved the…
When I started this book, I thought I had never before read anything by Bertrice Small. But with each new plot development I became convinced that many years ago I had read one. That book, I believe, was A Love For All Time, third in the Skye O’Malley series. I remember it so clearly because…
I was very excited to review Lynsay Sands’ newest release. Her novel The Key is one of my favorite funnies, and I also enjoyed her anthology piece in Five Gold Rings. But despite a promising start, Always falters under the weight of too-familiar characters and plot developments. Aric of Burkhart has just discovered his fiancee…
I finished this book in one sitting, which is not a testament to its excellence, but rather the knowledge that if I put it down, I might never pick it up to finish it. There were many problems with this story, but most of them lead back to one thing. It has on of the…
Virginia Henley has been writing historical romance since the early 1980s. She continues to write the larger-than-life, old-style romance she is famous for. For this reviewer, The Marriage Prize features a potentially engaging plot that is undermined by prose that can only be described as the deepest purple, a hoydenish and defiant heroine who tosses…
The Wolf and the Dove challenges the very boundaries of love and war and proves there lays but a fine line between conquered and conqueror. Norman knight and victor, Wulfgar easily ousts cruel Ragnor and takes authority over Darkenwald and the beauty who possesses a provocative courage. Courage, he believes, that is rarely matched by…
The Maiden Bride takes place during a sad and frightening period in history. During the fourteenth century, the Black Death ravaged the countryside, decimating the populations of villages, estates and monasteries. Thousands upon thousands of peasants, tradesmen, and crafts people died. Labor was short and in many places there simply were not enough people to…
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