on May 4, 2009

http://super_librarian.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html

The Golden Age

Back before blog­ging really took off, I would lurk over at the AAR mes­sage boards. Inevitably a thread would crop up every cou­ple of months. Some­one bitch­ing voic­ing their con­cerns that his­tor­i­cal romance just “ain’t what it used to be.” Too much wall­pa­per, not enough “meaty” history.

Then the his­tor­i­cal mar­ket seemed to peak and stag­nate a bit — and every­one started declar­ing the his­tor­i­cal romance “dead.” I never really put much stock into this the­ory, but I do think the his­tor­i­cal romance as we once knew and loved it is poised for a big revival. Sweep­ing sagas fea­tur­ing pas­sion, betrayal, loy­alty, and above all? Actual his­tory. If you’re an old-school romance fan, espe­cially one who adores medievals? Yeah, just stop read­ing my review right now, run out and buy The Con­queror by Kris Kennedy. It has every­thing you’ll want, and more (!), all for the bar­gain base­ment price of $3.99.

Sigh, yes I know the back cover copy says that it’s 1152 and Henry II is the King of Eng­land. But even though the per­son who writes the back cover copy at Zebra doesn’t know his­tory, the author does; and she employs it to excel­lent effect, while tweak­ing things just enough to make this fic­tional story all her own.

After years of war, Guin­e­vere de l’Ami is tired. Her beloved father is dead, and now the vil­lain who lives on a neigh­bor­ing estate is try­ing to force her into mar­riage. It’s while she’s busy thwart­ing his evil plans that she finds her­self res­cued by Griffyn “Pagan” Sauvage. What nei­ther of them knows? Each oth­ers true iden­tity. Griffyn doesn’t know that Gwyn (or “Raven” as he takes to call­ing her) is the daugh­ter of his sworn enemy. And Gwyn has no idea that Griffyn is the right­ful heir to her estate. Also? They both are on dif­fer­ent sides of the con­tin­u­ing bat­tle over the Eng­lish throne. Gwyn backs King Stephen and Griffyn is work­ing to secure the throne for Henry II.

There’s also the small mat­ter of some long, lost trea­sure rumored to be hid­den on Gwyn’s Griffyn’s land.

Seri­ously, this is like the first 50 pages.

There is a lot going on in this book, and it couldn’t have been easy for the author to jug­gle all of this in one story. How­ever, Kennedy makes it work, with mys­ter­ies solved, loy­al­ties tested, and the strug­gle for con­trol of the Eng­lish throne all be resolved by the end of the story. The author does tweak a few his­tor­i­cal facts to make her story work, but they add to the drama and con­flict of the story, and force Gwyn and Griffyn to admit their love and devo­tion to each other.

I sus­pect the one issue that will be hard for some read­ers to over­come is Gwyn’s unflinch­ing, unyield­ing loy­alty to King Stephen — even after it’s appar­ent to her, and the reader, that she’s breath­lessly in love with Griffyn. It’s a hard thing to under­stand, I think, as a 21st cen­tury reader, that peo­ple in medieval times lived and died for their loy­alty. So yeah, I’m not above admit­ting that I got annoyed with her…but a part of me did understand.

This is a big, sweep­ing saga of a story, and it’s also a damn hard one to write a review for. It really has that epic qual­ity that used to be so com­mon place in his­tor­i­cal romance, but has been absent for many years as the sub genre took off like a rocket dur­ing the late 1990s. For read­ers who miss “the golden age” of his­tor­i­cal romance? The Con­queror has all you want, and more, since the author avoids the many pit­falls that plagued some of those sto­ries of yes­ter­year (no forced seduc­tion, the hero isn’t a jack­ass, and the hero­ine isn’t a brain dead twit). It’s easy to see why this book finaled for RWA’s Golden Heart award. It’s really a very accom­plished debut novel, and fans of medievals should just beat the Christ­mas rush and start rejoic­ing now.

Grade = B