This one didn't work for me at all. For me personally it is the worst of the SPFBO books I've read this year. The prose is decent, and the start was good. So the author shows promise - but sadly that is all the good I can say about it...

Review contains some "bad language".


The dialogue didn't work for me, and doesn't seem to make sense at times. For example The main character tells his "ward" to either talk her fiancee out of something, or he'll get killed. And when she speaks he tells her "Quiet". Another example is the baroness teasing him about their past (asking him if it bothers him to imagine another man inside her *rolls eyes*) and tells him that clinging to the past is a weakness. When he mentions one past night she goes all "Enough! You speak another word of our past and I will kill you right here..."

Some things also don't make much sense to me. Like it being a BIG problem that the packhorse got killed! When he just shot two riders... What about their horses?

I dislike any and all characters, and not in the "villain but you still root for them somehow" way like with Abercrombies characters. I don't care one bit about any of them. I think if they all died it would be a better world and story.

Mild spoilers from about 1/4 in

Spoiler

He punches his ward unconscious. He then drags her from her horse "The heat of her lithe young body against his." "He hesitated...then laid her on the ground" (*gag* especially as she is the daughter of his former lover...)
He then searches her for weapons, throws her over her horse again and binds her to it, to punch her to unconsciousness again when she wakes. (He could have just let her lie on the floor as he is still repacking their stuff, as he has no packhorse left...)

When she wakes again and is free from being bound and finds herself weaponless she goes right for seduction, and it is so bad, a cheap TV porn seems literary in comparison...
"I'm sorry, Mr Wendt. - Apology accepted. - In fact, we should get to know each other better. Know what I mean? - Oh yeah? - Uh-huh." *rolls eyes* Uh-Huh, my ass... (sorry, but this is just too bad to stay straight faced while reviewing)

I stopped reading shortly after, after he told her "It is just us out here, if I really want your body, I'll take it."

The whole book just seems like a cheap fanfic that lacks an edit (not so much for typos, but inconsistencies and bad dialogue) about a man who is way overpowered, using his "might" over others and feeling like he is a good guy.

Jorg for example might be a villain, an asshole and a rapist, but at least he is written in a way that shows you he knows what and who he is, and that he is supposed to be like that. this one doesn't seem to know or portrait how creepy his behaviour is...