Date published September 2008
ISBN 978-0505527639
Paranormal Romance
Mass Market Paperback
Reviewed by Gina
Foregoing yet again one of society’s entertainments, Lady Jasmina weaves a simple spell to create a double of herself. She’s done it many times before, usually when on a similar mission as the one she’s about to begin. You see, her mother has a habit of “borrowing” other people’s jewellery. Not that she borrows it with their knowledge. In fact, most of us would consider it stealing. Be that as it may, on this one particular evening something with her spell goes not quite right due to the addition of one of Merlin’s Relics. Magical in nature, the relics are perhaps the only things truly feared by Prince Albert and his entourage—they are the very things that can bring the kingdom crashing down around their ears. While Jasmina goes off on her latest errand to return an object to its rightful owner, her double takes off on her own adventure.
As with virtually all shapeshifters, Sir Sterling Thorn is scorned by the rest of society. Despite how magnificent he is in his wereform, that of a splendid black stallion, Sterling is all but ignored. When he meets Jaz, however, nothing can keep him from his goal of bedding and wedding the beauty. Not even the fact that she is an illusion created by magic. Despite his attachment to Jaz, who disappears from him hours after he has wed her, his first concern is to find his missing sister, Angel. While his smarmy brother Cecil insists Angel has run off with an unsavoury sort, Sterling refuses to believe she would have done such a thing. When Sterling sights the woman he believes to be his wife in the Prince’s Hall, he finds himself quickly put down by the real woman. On the other hand, despite her best intentions, Jasmina cannot help but feel attracted to the potently attractive were-stallion. Together they must work to find the missing relic, Angel and Jasmina’s wayward double.
Kathryn Kennedy creates an amazing world that lives beyond the veil of our own. It is a world inhabited by charming, sexy and devious magical beings not all that different from ourselves. Her imagination is a gift and a sensual banquet for her readers. I’m not a huge fan of shapeshifters or fantasy, but I would read anything of Ms. Kennedy’s in a heartbeat, she tells that good of a story. The world she creates in her Relics of Merlin series is one I wish truly existed and I could live there.
There are a few threads that I wondered about and felt somewhat unsatisfied when they did not play out. There seemed to be a bit made of Jasmina agreeing not to marry, but nothing was said as to why or how she felt when the promise was broken. Nor does her father remind her of her promise when she embarks on the path to marital bliss. The gnomes, Nuisance and Trouble were an intricate part of the story, but they annoyed me. More than entertain, they distracted me from the story. Every time they popped up they pulled me out of the story, making me want to skim until their scenes were over. If they were meant to annoy the reader as much as Jasmina, they achieved their goal for this reviewer.
I fell in love with Sir Artemis. The were-lion was totally hot, even hotter than Sterling and he sizzled off the pages! Sterling was, in some ways, that girlhood attraction to horses as powerfully beautiful animals carried into adulthood. His innate sexuality is felt from the moment readers meet him and carries through to the very end.
I can’t wait to see where Ms. Kennedy takes us with the next relic. I for one cannot wait to find my way back into the mystical streets of her Victorian world.
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