Late to the party, book 1

I try and stay current on the books that are getting big buzz in the industry, but like most big readers I'm a bit behind. I actually keep my to-be-read pile under a semblance of control, but it still gets away from me and I end up reading the latest Big Thing like, six months or a year late. So it goes.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with my local librarian (I know that sounds like I have no life, but too bad suckas, her name is Kathleen and she's awesome) and she recommended Warprize to me. I seemed to remember a lot of readers raving about this book so I tried it out.




The basic plot is this: in a sort of alternate-history fantasy land, a woman (in a very flimsy dress apparentlyl, lol) is taken as a warprize for a barbarian king, who promises peace in the newly-conquered kingdom if she is given to him as a slave.

As premises go, it's a good one. For the first hundred pages I was very interested to see where the author would go with it. Would the heroine (Xylara, for pete's sake) submit or fight back? Will the barbarian king be brutal or merciful? What will be the consequences if they don't get along? Will the author actually go where everyone is thinking - into forced-sex territory? Lots of potential for conflict here.

But this is a romance novel, so the answers are 1) submit, 2) merciful, 3) it doesn't matter because they do, 4) no. As the plot unwinds, the darker potential in the main setup is very neatly disposed of, and we end up with all of the nicer options taken so that no readers will end up disturbed. In the hands of George R. R. Martin, this book would have been 500 pages and left the reader begging for mercy at the end. But this is a very different story.

I didn't like the heroine much - she's a bit dense, and I'm so over the Heroine Who Must Heal Others At Any Cost Because She Is So Noble - and the hero, except for the odd battle, was pretty soft for a warlord, but overall I was entertained. How can you not be entertained by lines like: "'The bitch will die!' he howled like a dog gone mad."?

I took a look at the second book - called Warsworn - and when I discovered that the plot hinges on Xylara bringing plague beause she Must Heal Others At All Costs Even Contagion Because She Is So Noble, I decided I couldn't stomach it. There's a third one, I think.

I wasn't swept away, I wasn't overwhelmed, but I was entertained for a few hours. On to the next book in the pile.