Mills & Boon, £4.99, ISBN 978-0-263-91741-3
Historical Romance, 2016
Medieval romances in a time when Normans and Saxons are at war are like Native American romances. Whoever the good guys are will depend on the bloke that the heroine’s favorite pee-pee is attached to.
Here, it should be obvious whose pee-pee is the heroine fixated on. Just look at the title: The Saxon Outlaw’s Revenge. Cue every Norman being nasty and vile in a most one dimensional manner.
Constance Arnaud detests her brother-in-law Baron Robert de Coudray because the man beat the spirit out of her sister and oh yes, he’s Norman so he’s cruel and vile, blah blah blah.
Seeing her sister change into this wraith reminded Constance how fortunate she was that though she was prettier than Jeanne, her twisted foot had prevented Robert choosing her as his bride when the sisters were offered.
If Elisabeth Hobbes had wanted me to empathize with Constance and, say, not view this heroine as a self-absorbed twat secretly gleeful that she remains the hottest gal in the room and her sister totally deserves the nasty man because how dare Jeanne’s leg isn’t twisted…. well, she’s not succeeding much. In fact, I’d say the author is failing big time when I am concerned.
Oh, and when Constance is scared for her life while watching her brother-in-law execute some Saxon traitor before a furious mob, she’s scared of the women in the crowd. Why isn’t she terrified of the men too? What is the author’s intention here?
How horrible, violence is everywhere, but nah, it’s far worse that all those hideous women are jealous of our awesome heroine’s perfect existence… well, except for that twisted leg that somehow never seems to get in the way of her awesomeness, so whatever; in a way, she’s still perfect so eat it, ugly bitches of the world.
Of course, because our heroine is destined to ride a Saxon mount into her sunset, she is right away convinced that her people are the bad guys. Look at Robert executing men that kill and butcher Normans—how could any good guy do such a thing? Stop bullying Saxons! Leave Saxons alone!
Anyway, having set the premise that the heroine is a world class simple-minded imbecile, the author proceeds to rely on one of the handful of acceptable medieval romance story lines. This time, it’s the abduction story line.
While she is reluctantly escorted from her cousin’s property back to Robert’s place, our now widowed heroine is abducted by Saxon rebels. Since the author has made it clear that our heroine is convinced that Saxons are saints in this war, gee, I am so scared for the heroine.
Constance recognizes one of the rebels, Caddoc, and immediately shrieks at him that she knows him as Aelric and he must save her from his fellow rebels. Under normal circumstances, Aelric would slit her throat to silence her and keep his identity a secret from his enemies, but ah, romance heroines have plot armors that are simply more impermeable to danger the more stupid they are.
Well, that and Aelric and she had a thing back then. If the author wanted me to view the heroine as someone that could make intelligent decisions and stances in this tumultuous time and not base her trust and opinion on whom she wants to shag, yeah, once again it’s not working on me.
What happens next is a familiar story, containing many of the tropes that come with this story line, but done in a bewildering, even schizophrenic manner.
The hero doesn’t seem to like the heroine at all, and there is barely any chemistry between them for a couple that had a thing in the past. Then again, who knows, as Constance is far from the smartest person around. She could have easily imagined that there was more to their thing than his thing.
Conversations and actions are for the most part circular and hence, the repetitiveness gets old very fast. While it is not the only one in the Mills & Boon historical romance line to make me feel that way, it sure seems like the author is just writing in circles hoping to strike upon some ideas to move the story forward.
Also, I’m repeatedly told that Constance is scared for her life while she is held captive. Okay, this is understandable, but her actions and words are a complete 180 from what she is supposed to be feeling. That’s right, our heroine may be terrified, but she’s also a girlboss, so whenever she opens her mouth, it’s to complain about how she’s not living the high life or to sass Aelric like she’s the lead character is some horrid CW show. Is the author trying to tell me that the heroine is bipolar or something?
Finally, while I know the heroine is an imbecile that bases all her opinion and judgment on whose peen she wants to preen on, it’s still frustrating to see her try to come up with justifications as to why the Saxons are saints and the Normans are rotten. The author already flattens a complex situation into a black and white Saxon peens are better nonsense, and to have the heroine apply this principle to ride the Saxon train guilt-free makes Constance come off even more like a horny imbecile that should just be kept in the kitchen and be let out only when the hero wants to do some rogering.
So, in the end, The Saxon Outlaw’s Revenge is a clumsy and laborious attempt to make a complex and unfortunate moment in history out to be as simplistic as idiotically possible, and the heroine ends up being a horny nincompoop as a result. The hero is a standard mule-faced “I want revenge! Revenge! Reve… horny! Horny!” fellow that, when paired to the imbecile, comes off like a genius by default. He’s still a boring, whiny bleating broken record, though. Oh, and the villain is so over the top that Snidely Whiplash would probably castigate that fellow for being too much.
Needless to say, this is one big blah of a whatever. I’m sure there are much better stories with similar story and characters out there.
The cover is gorgeous, though, I’d give it that.
