Helpful Score: 3
Susan Squires is a great author. She's consistent, intelligent, and research is her friend. While this novel isn't quite as good as it's predecessor "Time for Eternity," it's certainly a story that will keep you up reading past your bedtime rather than helping to put you to sleep. I do have a soft spot for well-done Viking/Saxon heroes time traveling to the modern day. But it can so easily go horribly wrong. So kudos to Squires for not turning it into a historical caricature but a real story with depth that just happens to take place in a world where time travel, vampires, and magic are possible. The hero is a true hero with all the requisite characteristics (loving animals, standing up against evil, being a compassionate lover, etc) but somehow still comes across as a real Viking. The romance takes advantage of the soul-mate plot device, but when it's done right like it is here, then it's very enjoyable. Lucy and Galen only have 6 days to fall in love but the intimate circumstances of hiding out on a small boat make it realistic. I really enjoyed the crash course in Old English and nautical terminology which gave the story that much more believability. So often authors wimp out and don't even try to explain how people from vastly different eras can communicate, much less fall in love. As a born and bred San Franciscan currently suffering it out in the Mid West, I also loved that this story really utilized it's Bay Area location. It made me quite nostalgic.
My only complaint with this story was the seemingly rushed ending that felt a little too easy to be believable. Galen's sudden super powers over the earth and Lucy's sudden savviness with the stock market (the latter being so out of left field) caused something of a mental eye-roll from me. I'm Wiccan myself, but there was just something about Galen making his way through the modern world as a secret Wiccan and highly sought after ecologist that just screamed too easy for me. It felt a little disingenuous after the more traditionally serious journey we'd already been on with the characters for most of the novel. A little too much of a "and they lived happily every after" way out of the story. I suppose part of the reason I might feel this way is because Susan Squires has never been shy about writing about the crazy grittiness of life in her previous paranormal historicals. This is a woman who wrote several stories in which her male heroes were sexually abused! Somehow, perhaps improbably, she still made them work as romances incidentally. In comparison this story is akin to when the fairy godmother in a fairytale waves her magic wand to make all the bad go away, or when the hand of God arrived at the end of Stephen King's The Stand to smite the bad guys causing you to go "Whuh?" and wonder what was the point of the good guys even fighting for a thousand pages if it was really that easy?
But weird ending and fluffier storyline aside, I still really liked this story and will continue to read more in the series. It's consistently good reading.
My only complaint with this story was the seemingly rushed ending that felt a little too easy to be believable. Galen's sudden super powers over the earth and Lucy's sudden savviness with the stock market (the latter being so out of left field) caused something of a mental eye-roll from me. I'm Wiccan myself, but there was just something about Galen making his way through the modern world as a secret Wiccan and highly sought after ecologist that just screamed too easy for me. It felt a little disingenuous after the more traditionally serious journey we'd already been on with the characters for most of the novel. A little too much of a "and they lived happily every after" way out of the story. I suppose part of the reason I might feel this way is because Susan Squires has never been shy about writing about the crazy grittiness of life in her previous paranormal historicals. This is a woman who wrote several stories in which her male heroes were sexually abused! Somehow, perhaps improbably, she still made them work as romances incidentally. In comparison this story is akin to when the fairy godmother in a fairytale waves her magic wand to make all the bad go away, or when the hand of God arrived at the end of Stephen King's The Stand to smite the bad guys causing you to go "Whuh?" and wonder what was the point of the good guys even fighting for a thousand pages if it was really that easy?
But weird ending and fluffier storyline aside, I still really liked this story and will continue to read more in the series. It's consistently good reading.
