Elina Emerald, $5.99, ISBN 978-0648970514
Historical Romance, 2020
Elina Emerald’s Handfasted to the Bear is the second entry in the Reformed Rogues series. Unlike the titles, which scream 19th century romance set in London, the series is actually set in the 12th century, revolving around men with animal nicknames to show readers how alpha and hoohah they all are. We are talking about… let’s see, Viking mixed with Scots mixed with good old fashion Norman genes, the ultimate master race.
Following Betrothed to the Beast, this one is about Brodie Fletcher, the Head Guardsman of the War Band, and yes, the annoying capitalization and italicization of words are still here.
The messenger bowed. “Master Ajani says Li’iliti Izara was captured from the Port of Zeila by Norsemen.”
Don’t ask me why Port of Zeila is italicized. This sentence is spoken by natives of the place in which the port is at, so it’s not like the name of the place is something foreign to them. Maybe the author believes that making Random Words start with capital letters and italicizing random phrases will make her story appear super special?
Anyway, it’s evident from the opening scene that Orla the Orphan was actually a princess kidnapped from her homeland in Abyssinia and somehow landed among Brodie’s people. She’s in love with him since she was five or something, and if those scary wild-eyed people on TikTok were to be believed, children under the age of 10 are perfectly capable of making permanent decisions about their sexual identity and giving consent to Reddit administrators that want to know them better than friends.
So, yes, this is true love.
The Bear is a hard-wenching bloke, his thirst for honey pots un-quenching and unyielding.
Brodie recognized the serving woman. She was a buxom brunette, and she looked vaguely familiar. He was sure they must have trysted in the past.
“I have come to see if there was anything else you’ll be needing tonight, Brodie?” she purred.
“No, thank you, Su… san?”
She did not react.
“Sar… ah?”
Still no reaction.
“Shar—”
“Tis Saundra.”
“Aye Saun… dra,” Brodie replied.
Okay, so the author is now going the Barbara Cartland route too? Lovely.
Still, when he decides to marry Orla, she is aghast. Not because he probably has all kinds of STDs or will likely try to sleep with all her best friends, if he hadn’t already, before the week is out, but rather, because she knows that he doesn’t love her and she can’t consign him to a loveless existence with an unworthy, lowly unwanted outcast like herself.
This story gives me whatever the equivalent of seasickness is. The author is relentless in that the story skips ahead days, weeks, even years after every two to three paragraphs. It’s that or the story skips to some location or even some characters’ point of view, as if the author had a severe case of ADHD that prevents her from focusing on any scene for any longer than a few short paragraphs at most.
This method of lurching me from the North Pole to the South Pole while also acting like an out of control time machine may work if the story had been fast-paced and full of wartime drama and whatever, like the back cover synopsis promises, but no.
This is a very typical story with a very familiar premise, only to be as long as it is because the author wasted pages after pages on unnecessary scenes of this character growing up or that character wiping their rear end in slow motion, and these scenes all end up having little to no bearing on the rest of the story.
It gets to a point where reading this story even from the first page becomes a chore, as I need to make note of the year prefacing each scene as well as the location to keep track of when and where the story is taking place. Even then, things are still a messy kind of confusion, and I wonder why I am working so hard to figure out a story that has a very familiar plot executed far better and more coherently by many authors in the past and no doubt in the future.
In fact, for lusty medieval romances, I’d recommend those older stories by Virginia Henley. Ugh, I’d always regret giving away those books when I was moving house. I still couldn’t believe that I gave those away but kept all those bandwagon urban fantasy and Navy SEAL books that I still couldn’t find the fortitude to crack open. What was I thinking…
Oh yes, this thing. Even if the story had been spectacular, and it certainly isn’t, this is still going to be super hard to swallow due to the technical issues that make me shudder and roll up my eyes each time I turn a page.
It doesn’t need a competent editor to patch things up, it should be dynamited completely into pieces for the author to use to start the whole thing anew. This time, preferably without all the Annoying Capitalization and Italicization as well as nausea-inducing time and location jumps every few paragraphs.
