Review – The Harvester By Lynn Crain

December 21, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Title: The Harvester

Author: Lynn Crain

Publisher: Shooting Star Books

Buy Link: Buy The Harvester Here!

Rating: ★★★★☆ You Need To Read

Reviewed By: Erin

Blurb:

Princess Sky Xera Nerezsh came to earth to avoid the normal succession path to the throne. Being the oldest daughter, she will be required to murder her mother in order to secure her path to power. Sky loves her mother and refuses this path, choosing instead to disappear in the vast reaches of space.

When her past collides with her present, she has to think quick on her feet, claim two men and a whole planet just to avoid the inevitable: a meeting with her mother. Along the way, she discovers true love and a burning need to be there for them always. Now if the other Harvesters can just keep to themselves, they’ll have no problems. But who said true love was ever easy.

Review:

THE HARVESTER by Lynn Crain is both sexy and smart, a kind of science fiction-with-benefits as we encounter a most unusual menage a trois. Three highly attractive people–a warrior-woman and two special forces men– move from a latter-day Las Vegas to a late-model space ship, to another world far beyond our own. They live and love, they fondle and fornicate, as the mother ship hurtles through hyperspace on its way to a safe haven.

On the planet Tyrsati, women have become “Harvesters,” trained to lure and capture men in every galaxy to keep their matriarchal society strong. Sky is the daughter of Queen Igzarta, one we learn who has lost track of her crafty oldest child. Sky has escaped–or so she thinks–to the lackluster planet earth, where she finds two breathtaking men.

She finds herself needing to rescue the men Jax and Zane–kilted Scotsmen, no less!–to keep them from the clutches of an evil Harvester named Jesata, who will not only use them but torture them. She also feels that she must hide from her powerful mother, who will punish her for eluding her for the last nine years.

The science fiction elements in Crain’s book are strong–from the sentient ship to Sky’s enhanced eyes–and the plot is as involved as it needs to be to keep a cunning chase-and-capture scenario moving along swiftly. I did not foresee the end, which was very well crafted.

The menage is also handled well, as two bisexual men are clearly aroused not only by each other but by Sky also. I never once got the feeling that the book was just an excuse for an extended sexual fantasy, as I have often encountered in menage novels. There are engaging characters, a good plotline, a climax and a satisfying resolution. That’s what I ask for in a book, along with really good writing.

What keeps this stellar book from being outright galactic is the editor’s inattention to simple rules of writing. Large amounts of unfortunate spelling and grammatical errors slow the pace and interfere with the confident writing.

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Review – The Fifth Story By Ivy Bateman

December 20, 2012 by 4 Comments

Title: The Fifth Story

Author: Ivy Bateman

Publisher: Breathless Press

Buy Link: Buy The Fifth Story Here!

Rating: ★★★★½ You Need To/Gotta Read

Reviewed By: Erin

Blurb:

When led into the world of her stories, Bryn finds her secret desires hidden in the darkness and behind every door.

Every day we encounter doors. Some of these doors are open to us and some of them are closed, but when we pass through any door, a different truth or mystery lies beyond the threshold.

The night Bryn is pulled into a world of her own stories by a shadowy being, her reality is changed forever. Souls and danger, hauntingly beautiful witches, sexy and dangerous vampires, a soldier with a dying wish; she knows that each door leads to a story and to outcomes she can’t control, but in order to return home, Bryn must complete a set of tasks for the enigmatic and strangely sensual Darkness.

With four stories to enter, four items to retrieve, Bryn takes part in plot points so out of character that she almost loses herself in the tales she’s written. More than once she questions her sanity and curses herself for creating such perilous realities, but she always remains focused on her goal; the creation of the fifth story.

Review:

Can an author write a psychological-paranormal thriller and an erotic tour de force at the same time? Yes, she can. And she did.

Ivy Bateman’s The Fifth Story is a mesmerizing, nightmare-filled adventure that nevertheless pulses with eroticism. It is the tale of an author forced to enter her own stories. The author-become-character must confront her own psyche. She must grapple with her own fears and give in to her deepest, most secret desires.

Bateman reveals a cool sense of control, a sure touch of erotic turn-on, and even a bite of graveyard humor as she weaves her unique tale.

Bryn is a writer who has suffered the recent loss of her boyfriend. Trying to cope with his death, she has written a series of stories. One night in a state of intense sorrow and self-reproach, she finds herself on the other side of her computer monitor–in the land where her stories were born. There she meets Darkness.

Bryn begins to be strangely attracted to Darkness, who often touches her in a way that brings indescribable pleasure. In one unforgettable scene, Darkness enters Bryn in an intense coupling that one must read to savor completely. Readers may draw their own conclusions here and elsewhere in the book from the narrator’s attraction to darkness, sexual overload and death.

Because Darkness is slowly losing the spirit that animates him, he sends Bryn to four rooms to bring back four items from her own creations: a soul, a sword, a body, and blood. Only with these items can he regain his essence and lead her out of this psychological prison. (This literary device of “bringing back objects”–indeed, the puzzling character of Darkness–is one of the few glitches in an otherwise flawless story. The quest motif is familiar to everyone who has been drawn into the ghastly logic of nightmarish fairy tales. But the drawback to me is how these objects are finally used and resolved.)

The palpable “shadow” she names Darkness leads her to four rooms where the characters she has created live . . . and die. In each of the four stories, Bryn experiences both fear and erotic heights.

In one of the rooms, she confronts Coran, a man who can bring a woman to orgasm merely by a random touch or look. She finds a powerful Celtic-type witch named Melusine who, with another woman, brings her to sexual heights she has only dimly imagined. In the fourth room, she finds herself the willing object of blood-lust at the mouth and fangs of Darius, a fearsome sex-crazed vampire. In every room she leaves, Bryn barely escapes, leaving numerous dead bodies behind.

The plot is finely crafted, as Bryn works her way through four stories of her own creation that begin to spin out of control. At last, she must enter “the fifth story”–the story that may bring her out of this phantasmagoric odyssey, or plunge her forever into nightmare. To discuss it further would be to give away the ending.

I highly recommend The Fifth Story to readers of paranormal erotic romance. The plot is absolutely mesmerizing as the main character enters and then conquers the challenges of four successive rooms, only to find at last that she must enter “the fifth room.” Warning, reader. Into this room, as well as the others, enter at your own risk.

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Review – Talbot’s Ploy By Kastil Eavenshade

December 1, 2012 by 2 Comments

Title: Talbot’s Ploy

Author: Kastil Eavenshade

Publisher: Evernight Publishing

Buy Link: Buy Talbot’s Ploy Here!

Rating: ★★★★☆ You Need To Read

Reviewed By: Erin O’Quinn

Blurb:

Talbot Sauvageot has kept his wicked lifestyle underground for several years, going from one lover to the next. Decedent rake to females by day, passionate lover for his latest male companion at night. When he is forced to flee Paris or face the guillotine, Talbot realizes none of the men he has bedded over the past years burns at his soul like his dear friend Maxime LaRue.

Forced into seclusion in the forest of Bois de Lunor, he receives an invitation from Maxime for their yearly gathering at his estate in Varanguebec. One that Talbot has avoided the past few years. Refusing to submit to a life without love, Talbot schemes to discover if his childhood friend shares the same taste in pleasure as he.

Will Maxime submit to Talbot’s ploy or cast his friend in the shadow of death?

Be Warned: m/m sex, forced seduction, rimming, multiple partners.

Review:

Here is a saucy, roguish, sex- and semen-filled romp through post-revolutionary France. Two men slowly but inexorably seek each other and come together in a final gasp of deep desire and heartfelt love. Passion doesn’t get much better than that!

Talbot Sauvageot is, to any who know him socially, a rake. He is a lover of bawd-halls and ladies’ boudoirs who hides the fact that he is attracted to men . . . especially one man, his childhood friend.

His lifelong friend Maxime LaRue is likewise a rake, one who sardonically holds festive overnight orgies for friends of like mind.

All the while these two old friends are pretending to delight in the flesh of females, each secretly longs for the other but cannot bring himself to betray the deeply held truth.

The story of Talbot and Maxime is full of twists and turns. Talbot, exposed as a sodomite, must seek a hideaway. But when he is invited to one of Maxime’s patented soirées, he throws away caution and seeks out the only man who fully impassions him. Maxime finds himself being drawn physically into Talbot’s embraces and ready mouth, and the two find some relief by means of a secret passageway. All two soon the lovers find that Maxime’s father Marcel has a bride for him, and he is to be married immediately.

Marcel, almost at death’s door, learns of Talbot’s sexual proclivities and declares that he must face his son in a duel. The action gets a bit melodramatic as the old father, coughing blood into his handkerchief, nevertheless proclaims that his beloved son must face this degenerate over dueling pistols.

The writing itself starts out with great promise, as the author plays with words as though they are sensuous playthings:

“The hall . . . curved and warbled in his drunken eyesight.” In the brothel, “squeals of pleasure leaked out of the sliver at the bottom of each door.” When the young Talbot was being pleasured by a partner, he remembered how “Shame and ecstasy . . twirled in a sinful ballet at gazing on another man feasting on his manhood.”

Sadly, the metaphoric language dwindles to a stop. Still, the novel is a beguiling look at homoerotic love in an era when such “depraved” sentiments are met by the cold blade of the guillotine. The love scenes between Talbot and Maxime, especially at the end of the novel, are full-bodied and fresh; and the ending is as satisfying as their exhilarating pleasure together.

 

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Review – A Little Piece of Heaven By Xondra Day

November 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Title: A Little Piece of Heaven

Author: Xondra Day

Publisher: Evernight Publishing

Buy Link: Buy A Little Piece of Heaven Here!

Rating: ★★★☆☆ You Want To Read

Reviewed By: Erin O’Quinn

Blurb:

Kansas, 1933

Calvin is going through a crisis in his life. After facing a potential scandal at college, he returns back to the family farm only to find himself the subject of gossip and rumors. His one solace is his father’s farmhand, Josh who he’s lusted after since the man’s arrival.

When chance presents itself, the two men come together for one afternoon of passionate pleasure and they discover they have more in common than they’d initially thought. But are their feelings for each other just a whimsy or is it something much more?

Be Warned: m/m sex.

Review:

This little story is really more of a first chapter, a beginning. It sketches a picture of two young men: Calvin, the educated son of a farmer who has been forced to leave school in the wake of rumors about a homosexual encounter; and Josh, his father’s handsome young hired hand who has been admiring the “cute” Calvin from afar.

The action takes place in Kansas in the 1930’s, but the era and setting are–unfortunately–almost incidental. We know it only because the author lets us know before the story begins, and because at one point we learn that Calvin is listening to Billy Holiday on the radio.

The story is as old as love itself–two attractive people are drawn to each other and make love, even knowing that their being together is forbidden by family and society.

The style is one I might expect from a beginning writer, with somewhat awkward transitions and clumsy sentences: “His boss’s cute son hadn’t gone unnoticed and many times he’d stolen glances at him when in each other’s company on the farm.” . . . . “He was one fine specimen of a man and his heart ached at the thought of touching him, along with other things.” “It wasn’t long before he felt the telltale signs of his forthcoming orgasm.”

On the positive side:  The young men know what they’re doing, and yet their confrontation is almost sweet in its slow innocence. The author writes as though homosexual love was a deeply hidden, delicious sin that is almost as difficult to write about as to consummate. And since we are back in the ‘thirties in Kansas, that tone rings true. So to me, the setting itself needs to become one of the characters in the sense that it needs to be in the minds of the readers, as real as the young men. The attitude toward sexuality in that time and place should play a large part in these young men’s attitudes, their inner fears and expectations.

I found this little piece to be devoid of a real plot line, with no pacing or attempt at a climax and resolution. As I said, it is a beginning. I hope the author will go back and turn the sketch into a more detailed character study, and even into an actual story. I’d like to know more about what happened at school to drive Calvin back to the pretended ignorance of his father. I’d like to see the young men’s meeting in the barn at the end be interrupted by something–perhaps by his outraged father, or by an incident that might make these two boys confront their attraction and affirm it to the world. Lacking those alternatives, I would like to have read that Calvin and Josh had a rousing, joyful climax.

I hope that A Little Piece of Heaven will be worked into a longer piece, because these lightly drawn characters deserve a more indelible writer’s pen.

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Review – Darl and the Spider Cult By Franz McLaren

November 2, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Title: Darl and the Spider Cult

Author: Franz McLaren

Publisher: Franz McLaren

Buy Link: Buy Darl and the Spider Cult Here!

Rating: ★★★★½ You Need To/Gotta Read

Reviewed By: Erin O’Quinn

Blurb:

A simple errand to the village blacksmith should not be an adventure. However, it is the first time Darl has been permitted away from the farm without a parent. Along the way he pauses to eat and falls into a stupor. Darl awakes a prisoner on a flying ship to be questioned by a sadistic pirate about his father – a father who is obviously not the man that raised him. Unable to provide answers he is thrown, shackled and confused, overboard for the amusement of the crew. Alone, chained, in a desert of stifling heat, he is left to die.

So begins the saga of Darl.

Here, in this oven of a land, Darl must face a spider cult led by a wizard intent on conquering the world. Only Darl knows that, if the wizard succeeds, his actions will destroy the world he hopes to conquer. How can a sixteen-year-old boy with only farming skills hope to prevent this disaster?

Review:

Nock your arrow, sharpen your sword–join Darl and his desert-dwelling friend Jared on an adventure of a lifetime as these two youngsters confront and conquer an array of enemies. There’s an endless horde of bloodthirsty, maniacal terrorists called Sulcana; tons of appendage-waving, hairy spiders of all sizes; and an especially chilling, murderous wizard who’s intent on ending the world as we know it, along with the plucky heroes.

DARL AND THE SPIDER CULT is the blood-pounding, exciting tale of two young men who together overcome an almost endless number of obstacles thrown in their way. Darl is a 16-year-old whose parents, we soon learn, are not the ones who have routinely abused him. In fact, his own father, he begins to suspect, is a kind of wizard he seeks in his mind throughout the book, while he and his new-found friend Jared try to survive.

I was charmed by the way this book reads almost like a role-playing game, where the adventures become more and more complex as the book continues. Every new chamber, every new spider hole or sand dune or hidden stairway is a new look into the eye of death. Each “level” has to be overcome before the protagonists can go on to the next.

McLaren keeps up an incredible pace as his heroes join in sword battles, arrow volleys, madcap running throughout underground spider chambers, and much more. I think young readers–‘tweens and early teens–will enjoy every chapter as they wonder how these two death-defiers will make it another hour, another day, as they try somehow to save an entire world. Without giving away the final escapades, I will say that the author presents an ending that hollers for a sequel–right away!

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Review – The Eagle’s Woman By Miriam Newman

September 28, 2012 by 3 Comments

Title: The Eagle’s Woman

Author: Miriam Newman

Publisher: DCL Publications

Buy Link: Buy The Eagle’s Woman Here!

Rating: ★★★★★ You Gotta Read

Reviewed By: Erin

Blurb:

Son of an impoverished, dying Norse chieftain, Ari raids for booty and slaves so he can feed his people. Pagan himself, still he spares priests though he sells them. He’s a heathen, a murderer, and it is a sin for any Christian woman to love him. Yet when he abducts Maeve from her peaceful Irish fishing village, he may have found the one woman who can.

Review:

Reading The Eagle’s Woman was to me like sipping a rare wine. The taste, the aroma, the heady fire of the words–I wanted the sensation never to end. Ah, Miriam Newman, you are the keeper and dispenser of poetic prose. You make me drunk with the pleasure of reading.

Like the two other novels by Newman I have read, The King’s Daughter and Scion, this latest one focuses on one powerful man and the woman he has come to “own.” And like those two books, the man is strong, resilient, even sensitive; while the woman keeps herself at an ironic distance, measuring and unyielding, yet irresistibly drawn to him.

Unlike those previous novels, which were set in almost fantasy universes, The Eagle’s Woman takes place in a setting cold, beautiful and real–the ninth-century Norway of the Vikings. Newman describes longships on the rough sea, steamy sauna baths and fire-lit longhouses with the sureness of a writer who has been in those very places.

Ari is a Viking whose latest foray has captured Irish slaves for selling in Denmark. Among the women is Maeve, a gold-haired beauty who fights her captivity from the beginning as she is almost raped by one of the rude plunderers. She fights her confinement on the longship, and most of all she fights the nearness to Ari, to whom she now belongs by right of seizure.  Even while struggling against him, she finds herself conflicted emotionally, seeing his compelling body and handsome face: “Well, he was a beautiful man, that was all. A beautiful, savage, murdering heathen.”

Ari himself is larger than life, almost like the majestic figurehead we imagine on the prow of a proud Viking ship. He is utterly enraptured by Maeve. Gazing on her, “His parts ached with immediate urgency.”At first he will not abuse her because he plans to sell her in Hedeby, a Danish port and center of a thriving slave trade. Later, as he begins to understand his own needs, he will not force her because he feels an honest admiration, and he respects her fighting instinct : “You could not put your heart in a woman’s hands. It was like handing a razor to a child–they would only cut it out without meaning to.”

The pace of the novel is swift and sure. The author takes us from the longship to Ari’s home in Norway; and from there to a distant coastline where Maeve has been brought as a captive again–this time by Ari’s malevolent half-brother.

At last Newman moves the reader to a long-awaited consummation of her characters’ passions, until finally Ari murmurs to his woman: “I want inside you. All of me, inside all of you.”

Here’s to beautiful writing, and to a satisfying love story. I raise my glass to you, Miriam Newman, and to your latest triumph The Eagle’s Woman.

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Review – A Band Of Roses By Pat McDermott

September 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

Title: A Band Of Roses

Author: Pat McDermott

Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing

Buy Link: Buy A Band Of Roses Here!

Rating: ★★★★★ You Gotta Read

Reviewed By: Erin O’Quinn

Blurb:

Irish kings still rule the Emerald Isle—and a princess is in trouble . . .

Ancient Irish traditions remain strong in a world where High King Brian Boru survived the Battle of Clontarf and established a dynasty that rules Ireland to this day. When greed for oil prompts England’s Regent to claim an Irish island in the North Atlantic, Ireland’s Crown Princess Talty becomes a pawn in a murderous plot to seize the throne of England.

From Japan to California to an eleventh century Ireland preparing for the Battle of Clontarf, Talty must hide her true identity, though she can’t hide her ingrained training as a member of the Fianna: the warriors who guard the Kingdom of Ireland. She brings home a discovery worth more than any oil well, yet all she wants is to return to her family and Neil Boru, the adoptive cousin she secretly loves and cannot have—or so she thinks. Neil has a secret of his own, one that emerges as the Boru clan works with MI6 to thwart an invasion of Ireland and bring Talty home.

Review:

On the cusp of its sequel Fiery Roses, this seems an especially good time to remind readers that McDermott has written a superb alternative history called A Band of Roses–the story of a band of Irish latter-day Fianna or warriors who are dedicated to saving their country and safeguarding the life of their King, Brian Boru.

In this book, Ireland is a monarchy like England, the imagined world that evolved in the aftermath of a different ending of the Battle of 1014.  In this parallel universe of the 21st century, the famous clansman was not killed but went on to solidify his clan and ultimately to be the scion of a line of kings, ending in the present King Brian Boru of Ireland.

Beautiful crown princess Talty, daughter of the king, is targeted by a group of malicious British nobles out to gain oil rights to an island off the coast of Ireland, men who plot to kill her and take over Ireland itself. Badly injured, she manages not just to escape, but to continue her training as one of the Fianna. Her survival is kept a secret for several months even from her own cousins, the six other members of the family who, among others, comprise the famous band of warriors.

A Band of Roses is a taut story of high adventure and deadly intent. McDermott writes in a kind of spare style that keeps the reader’s pulse pounding. The devastation of an Irish oil rig in the opening chapters is heart-rending, yet the author maintains a certain grim distance from the bloodshed, letting us dwell instead on the evilness of the men who plan and execute the attack. Instead of waxing poetic about the stark beauty of the desert, for instance, she makes us feel the harsh environment and the sense of ever-present peril: “Blinded and choking, she pulled the robe over her face. A powerful gust knocked her down. Inch by inch she fumbled toward the rocks. She shrieked when her hand hit the furry corpse of a baby goat.”

In addition to being a story of conspiracy and adventure, this is a book of understated romance, as Talty and her cousin-by-adoption fall in love but are kept apart by centuries-old rigid legal strictures. Will they find a way to overcome the social stigma and come together, or will even members of her own family stand in the way of her happiness? “Then he was kissing her back, the taste of his mouth warming its way down her throat like the burn of fine brandy.” She makes the reader thrill to sensations that she merely suggests, and the result is delicious, leaving our imagination to consummate the scene.

McDermott explores a world made real recently by the long-theorized discovery of the God Particle, a scientific breakthrough that seems to validate the existence of multiple parallel universes. In A Band of Roses, Talty and a few colleagues actually explore one of those parallel worlds–the world in which Brian was actually killed, and where a bleak future awaits the few survivors.

In spite of the complexity of the plot and the deep research that went into its writing, McDermott has written a book that pulls the reader along at a breakneck pace, racing with Talty to outsmart the enemies who would end the very existence of her beloved father and her precious homeland. My heart was pounding throughout most of the book, cheering for the ingenious Fianna as they attempt to overcome a complex plot hatched by murderous conspirators.

I highly recommend A Band of Roses as a rare combination of tight prose, heady adventure and a touch of sweet romance. Fiery Roses may be just as good–but I don’t see how it could possibly be better than this superlative first novel!

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Review – The Highwayman By Angela Plowman

September 9, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Title: The Highwayman

Author: Angela Plowman

Publisher: Liquid Silver Books

Buy Link: Buy The Highwayman Here!

Rating: ★★★★☆ You Need To Read

Reviewed By: Erin

Blurb:

Romance and adventure are things Ben only dreams of until they come knocking on the door of his father’s inn the night a handsome and dominant rogue appears. 

And even though Ben’s secret midnight visitor has danger trailing his shiny leather boot heels, the dangerous man finds Ben’s innocence more than he can resist. Instead of inviting a sexy older man into his bed, Ben may have invited more trouble than he can imagine. 

While the wild dark moor surrounding them holds many secrets, tonight the biggest mystery of all is whether either of them will survive to see the dawn.

Review:

Almost everyone remembers the repetitious cadence and the lilting gallop of Alfred Noyes’ famous poem “The Highwayman,” a poem extolling the darkly handsome thief who went “riding, riding, riding”  to his lover in the moonlight, “up to the old inn door.” Written in 1906, it tells of a fictitious 18th-century highwayman who stole from the rich–never from the poor–and became enamored with “the landlord’s black-eyed daughter.”

In Angela Plowman’s version, the highwayman is in love–but with the landlord’s black-eyed son. The story begins, as the best of suspense tales do, with the end, as the young boy is trussed by Redcoats, a firearm rigged to kill him if he warns his lover of their presence. 

What a great hook! From that dramatic scene, the novel is a flashback to how the lovers –a nineteen year old slender, almost pretty youth and an older handsome and sensuous Frenchman–became acquainted and how they became lovers. The novel parallels enough of the ballad-like poem that the reader fears the ending will be a sorrowful one, for in the original the black-eyed Bess shoots herself so that the shotgun-blast will serve as a warning to her lover.

In this book, the love between the lad Ben and the highwayman Richard is at times tangible in its directness and sometimes even tenderness. I like the way Plowman parallels the poem just enough to keep the mood and setting uppermost. I also like most of the love scenes, as the boy becomes so enamored of the older man that he willingly gives himself in every way. 

I also like the way the story is told through the eyes of the boy–fresh, love-struck, and naive–and the way he sees his lover’s humor and masculinity.

The love scenes are no-holds-barred. The men are unashamed in their lust, and the author leaves nothing to the imagination. Each love-making seems more lusty and titillating than the last. In spite of the impossible sexual positions and improbable physical abilities of the lovers, I still enjoyed the love scenes very much.

Alas, the book has one major flaw. For me, the language itself, when it was not evocative of Noyes’ famous cadences and even phrases, was very awkward. I gave up counting the use of passive voice, especially when the sexual language should have been at its most direct and palpable. I have lifted these phrases (and there are many more) from various parts of the narrative and string them together here to give an idea: Expressive dark brows were raised. The tears were kissed from his face. Then both cheeks were spread. His hips were grasped … hard. In times like these, the reader longs for the directness of active voice: “He raised his dark brows and kissed the tears from his lover’s face. He spread both his cheeks and grasped his hips, hard.” You get the idea.

There are also several lapses in spelling, grammar and diction that I feel could have been eradicated before the manuscript reached publication.

In all, I liked and enjoyed The Highwayman. The author has done a commendable job of imitating the tone of the famous poem. Her depiction of the characters is fresh and charming, the pace is brisk, and the ending is romantic and satisfying. One more close editing of this novel and a change to active voice would have raised  my rating another notch, and I give it a 4 out of 5.

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Review – Midsummer Maid By Lindsay Townsend

August 3, 2012 by 2 Comments

Title: Midsummer Maid

Author: Lindsay Townsend

Publisher: MuseItUp Publishing

Buy Link: Buy Midsummer Maid Here!

Rating: ★★★★★ You Gotta Read

Reviewed By: Erin

Blurb:

Together, can their love defy the world? At Midsummer all things are possible…

He was a good man but cursed with the mark of the devil on his face and shunned by many.

She was a dairy-maid, caring and brave, who feared no one.

Drawn to each other on a long and fateful Midsummer Day, can Haakon and Clare overcome the superstitions of their village and the brutal, lecherous knights to break out of their bonds of class and custom and to strive for a better life – together?

Review:

Short and sweet, like a sip of summer wine…. Those words describe Lindsay Townsend’s swirl of honey, Midsummer Maid.  Only a bit over 20 pages, this little book is a treasure-trove of medieval sweet romance triumphing over the frenzy of lust.

I think the author wants us to see her book as a reflection of the tenderness that lies in the heart of the most simple of people–dairy maids and foresters–and how it is more meaningful and more true than the studied chivalry of a stiffly hierarchical society. Her prose is light as a May breeze, unstudied as a girlish smile.

Haakon the woodsman is a man shamed by an ugly birthmark–a red mark that runs across his chin and part of his cheek. Seeing the mark as evil, the village maidens, all but one, run from him. Clare is a dairy maid, a lustrous, pretty little wisp of life whom he loves from a distance but one he is afraid to approach any more closely than a wave and a smile.

On a midsummer festival day, Haakon carries Clare in a special chair as Lady of the Revels. When she and a priest leave to gather and strew wildflowers for the religious significance, he thinks about her, evoking images of the very flowers she is surrounded by:

Were I a unicorn of the wildwoods, I would come to lay my head in your lap, he thought, wishing he were the stitchwort, daises, and white campion she was scattering, or better yet, the marigolds tucked within her bodice, a golden glow between her breasts.

Told from Haakon’s point of view, the story recounts his wonder and joy that Clare, instead of fearing him, seems to be drawn to him as he is to her. When a brutal, lustful knight seeks to take her, Haakon and Clare must face the consequences of standing up against a knight of the manor lord. And even if they can escape his grasp, will this woman accept him, scarred as he is?

As if in counterpoint to his scar, Clare’s face is scattered too with marks, “a tiny scattering of freckles close to her hairline, a delicious trifle . . .” With this subtle touch of parity between the two characters, Townsend delights the reader as she draws us into a parable of goodness and true honor overcoming the darker needs that lie within.

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Review – The Snow Bride By Lindsay Townsend

July 29, 2012 by 10 Comments

Title: The Snow Bride

Author: Lindsay Townsend

Publisher: BookStrand

Buy Link: Buy The Snow Bride Here!

Rating: ★★★★★ You Gotta Read

Reviewed By: Erin

Blurb:

She is Beauty, but is he the Beast?

Elfrida, spirited, caring, and beautiful, is also alone. She is the “witch of the woods,” and no man dares to ask for her hand in marriage until a beast comes stalking brides and steals away her sister. Desperate, the lovely Elfrida offers herself as a sacrifice, as bridal bait, and she is seized by a man with fearful scars. Is he the beast?

In the depths of a frozen midwinter, in the heart of the woodland, Sir Magnus, battle-hardened knight of the Crusades, searches ceaselessly for three missing brides, pitting his wits and weapons against a nameless stalker of the snowy forest. Disfigured and hideously scarred, Magnus has finished with love, he thinks, until he rescues a fourth “bride,” the beautiful, red-haired Elfrida, whose innocent touch ignites in him a fierce passion that satisfies his deepest yearnings and darkest desires.

Review:

Lindsay Townsend’s medieval romance The Snow Bride is a radiant tale that brings together a beauty and a beast, in language that is poetic, evocative and unforgettable.

In twelfth-century England, beautiful red-haired Elfrida is the white witch, the good spirit, the Christian healer. Magnus is the scarred, blunt, ugly and maimed returning Crusader who has given up hope that any woman will ever love him. And when they come together in a kind of miracle, he feels “after so many years of reluctant, hasty couplings with women who stared at the coins he gave and never at his face, a healing, loving balm.”

Yes, they come together. The physical joining is always joyful for both of them. And yet the times out of each other’s arms–while the two of them go in search of three endangered brides in the clutches of an evil man–those are times of indecision and passion, worry and misunderstanding and clashing of wills.

Before I go on, I would like to take a few short sentences to appreciate Lindsay Townsend’s writing.

I appreciate…

…The subtlety of the story-telling, the way of saying something without saying it, as when the author describes Magnus’ long-withheld sexual urges: “And then a deep, abiding ache, bedding down in the great hall alone.”

…The many tiny metaphors tossed throughout like sequins on a bodice: “her needles flashing like a small sword.” “He clamped his body behind her like moss on a boulder.”

…The cadence, the sense of poetry, that is palpable in almost every line.

The Snow Bride is not an easy book to write about. Don’t get me wrong–it is easy to read, for the characters are engaging and the pacing is brisk and exciting. But the themes that bend and weave and interplay in the story are like quicksilver to catch and describe.

Lindsay Townsend tells both a simple story and a complex one–a story of Christian healing and white magic battling against dark necromancy. It is a fairy tale, a beauty and the beast tale for the romantic at heart; but it is also a moral tale of good versus evil and light versus dark. The Snow Bride is all that, and more–a tale told by a modern beguiler who weaves her own magic to tell the tale of Magnus the scarred, ugly brute and Elfrida, the Snow Queen.

This love story between two unlikely characters is very real and fully imagined. To Magnus, “if she [Elfrida] was a Madonna, he was a gargoyle.” And to Elfrida, he is her “man-angel in demon dress, her beast knight and snow knight.”  Beauty, merge with beast…and delight us happily ever after.

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