Publisher: Breathless
Press
Date
published: 1 February 2013
ISBN: 978-1-77101-927-9
Time Travel
E-book
Reviewed by Helen
Obtained via
publisher
Gwendolyn Braxton is a huge fan of the Renaissance era and is the
Arthurian specialist at the museum where she works. But she’s Black, thirty and
unattached, so her mother decides to send her to the UK to find her real-life
Knight in Shining Armor.
Morien is
one of twelve knights sent from Camelot by Merlin to recover the Holy Grail.
Until he finds it he can’t return home. He’s spent five years searching with no
success and he longs to go home.
The idea for
this story is great, but the first barrier to me for losing myself in the book
is the historical divide. King Arthur was fifth to sixth century. Even if the
story doesn’t take place until much later it was the eleventh and twelfth
centuries when Arthurian legend was popular. The Renaissance was the fifteenth
to seventeenth centuries and most Renaissance Faires focus on the Tudor period
in England, specifically Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) which is nowhere near
Arthur’s time or when his legends were popular. Actually, Arthurian legends
were most unpopular during the Renaissance time and only revived in the
nineteenth century. This would be so easy to fix simply by exchanging all the
“Renaissance” mentions to “Medieval”.
Secondly,
Gwen is a woman of color yet her eyes are gray, her skin is termed “honey
colored” and her hair is described several times as “golden” and once as “sandy
brown”. Quite apart from the fact that golden is quite different from sandy
brown, neither of those say “woman of color” to me. If your heroine is Black
why not give her darker eye, skin and hair coloring?
Finally, the
sex scene uses euphemistic words and at times borders on purple prose.
The
characters are well drawn and interesting, and the basic premise of the story
is good. Unfortunately the execution doesn’t follow through.
This is an objective review and not
an endorsement of this book.
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