Margo Maguire 'Temptation of the Warrior'

You may have noticed by now that my bar is pretty low for silly storylines, especially ones that stray into the fantasy genre. Here's another good example. Merrick is high chieftain of the Druzai, a people from another land. He must travel to the Tuath lands (regular humans) and to another time to find a magical stone that will help protect his people from a nasty witch's attack.

After arriving in 19th Century northern England, he happens across Jenny being attacked by some ruffians on the roadside. While he is defending her he gets hit on the head and loses his memory. Gypsies happen upon them, scare off the ruffians, and assume he's Jenny's husband.

I particularly liked this hero, I enjoyed the time they spent together with the Gypsies, I suppose I like the magic, the sex is good, the heroine is admirable, but in the last third of the book things bog down. It just takes too damn long to track down this magic stone. The heroine's dithering about whether to leave Merrick or not wouldn't have been too annoying if it hadn't been the exact same scene three times over. If you are going to repeat a moment of indecision, at least vary it a bit, location, time of day, motivation, anything! And the sections of the book where we read about the Druzai waiting for Merrick, completely flat, yuk. I enjoyed this book, I will pick up this author again but it wasn't without faults.

Historical Paranormal Romance 2007: 3.5 of 5 magical threads.