Monday, September 16, 2002

My Lady de Burgh, by Deborah Simmons

I'm going with a Medieval light, by Deborah Simmons. It's the last published of her de Burgh series, My Lady de Burgh.

Short description:
Blaming the rash of family weddings on some sort of curse, Robin de Burgh tries to find a cure, but instead he stumbles across murder, mystery, and his own mate.
Posted later...

I finally finished My Lady de Burgh, and it was just ok, a B-.

I mean, it was readable and I liked it, but it was not one of Simmonds' best. It did have most of the elements that have made her one of the few writers whose Medievals I read, but things simply didn't jibe as they should.

The good parts were:

  • It was quite lite (not light!), which is the way I prefer my Medievals


  • The H/h really had lots of chemistry going on and were quite likeable


  • the part about life in the nunnery was interesting
On the flip side, too many clichéd plot devices. For instance: you don't lie down and fall asleep on a guys bed when you go to find him in his room and he isn't there. That's just a plot device so that he can find the heroine there and have a love scene. Also, it was TSTL behaviour on Sybil's part not accepting marriage in name only to Robin when her life was in danger.

Other problems: the dénouément of the suspense part felt rushed, especially in the resolution. It was way over the top how everyone bowed before the great power of the de Burghs, and the whole congregation in the ecclesiastical court an opportunity to get all the de Burghs together so that they could make their obligatory appearance in this book (I hate when that happens in series).