Retro Review: Defiant

This review of Defiant by Bobbi Smith was first posted at The Romance Reader in 2006. Back then I rated it 2-Hearts (equivalent of a D grade) with a sensuality rating of PG.

+++++

One of my favorite booksellers recently told me that westerns were making a comeback. If books like Defiant are what fans of the sub genre have to look forward to we’re in for a bumpy ride.

Clint Williams should be dead. A Texas Ranger, he was home for a visit when the deadly Tucker Gang came calling. Clint’s father, also a Ranger, was very close to capturing the gang, but they struck first. Everyone is dead. Clint miraculously survives his wounds, and vows vengeance. To do so, he takes on the assumed identity of gunfighter Kane McCullough and tracks the Tucker Gang to Dry Springs, Texas.

Rachel Hammond is the innocent, beautiful daughter of the Dry Springs preacher. Daddy has a thing about crusading, and one night takes his family and members of his congregation into the Last Chance Saloon to save all the sinners. As one can imagine, their message is not well received, and Rachel soon finds herself being pawed by a drunken lout. Clint rides to the rescue, and she’s in the throes of puppy love.

That’s basically it. Clint wants revenge and is hanging around Dry Springs waiting for the outlaws to show up. Rachel moons over Clint. Clint feels that women like Rachel are “meant to be protected and cherished,” and even though he knows he cannot afford to be distracted, he continues to hover around her anyway.

It’s amazing I managed to keep my food down.

If Defiant had been better written, I might have been able to overlook the cardboard characters. If the characters were more compelling, I might have been able to overlook the poor writing. Unfortunately, with both strikes against it, Defiant doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

Smith’s writing style is all tell and no show. In many cases, it felt like I was reading an outline to the story instead of the actual finished product. Compounding this is the fact that the author likes to head-hop a lot. One moment we’re being told what Rachel thinks, then what Clint thinks, then what one of the outlaws thinks, then what Rachel’s mother thinks, then what the town sheriff thinks and so on. Because of this, the reader feels disconnected from the main couple, thus further handicapping the romance, which isn’t much to brag about as is. One suspects that it is intended to be love at first sight, but it’s even more slipshod than that. Clint saves Rachel; they share some idle chitchat, then poof! They’re in love! They cannot stop thinking about each other!

Adding insult to injury, Rachel reinforces the stereotype for preachers’ daughters. She’s innocent and beautiful on the outside, but once she finds herself alone with Clint she practically throws herself at him. One moment she’s giggling like a schoolgirl and is so sickeningly sweet she gives the reader a toothache, the next she’s an experienced flirt dropping innuendos. It’s enough to give the reader whiplash. The purple prose certainly doesn’t help matters either with gems such as “They clung to each other as their lips met in a cherishing exchange that showed without words the depth of what they were feeling for one another.”

It’s hard to imagine it getting worse than that, but it does with the ending. The identity of the mastermind behind the Tucker Gang (known simply as The Boss) comes as no shock to anyone with two brain cells to rub together and Rachel blithely puts herself in danger for no credible reason.

I fervently hope that my favorite bookseller is correct and that westerns are on the upswing. Hopefully the rebirth of the sub genre won’t feature more books like this one.

+++++

Wendy Looks Back: Reading over this review and vaguely recalling this book, I'm not sure how this escaped 1-Heart (F Grade) territory.  Either I was feeling overly generous that day or else Dede (my former editor at TRR) coded the HTML incorrectly.  Anyway, if you subscribe to the school of thought that Wendy is a cranky fusspot or if you want to see for yourself if it's really as terrible as I said back in 2006 - Kindle Unlimited folks can give this one a whirl for free.

The King, The Priest, The Knight, And The Mystery Woman

Here's a fairly useless factoid, before doing time in graduate school to earn my library degree, I slogged through four years of undergraduate work where I earned a degree in history.  My specialty (such as it was) was British History.  Yes, the girl who loves westerns got a degree in British History.  That being said, despite four years of my life given to this task, I'm pretty much clueless on those wacky Brits pre-Henry VIII.  Which sort of helps explain my reaction to Kris Kennedy's latest book (and her first for Pocket), Defiant.

England is in turmoil.  King John isn't exactly a warm and cuddly sort, various barons are threatening civil war, and the Magna Carta is on the horizon.  Knee deep in all of this is Jamie Lost, our hero, and one of the king's most trusted knights.  John has sent him on a mission to find Father Peter of London, rumored to be back in England after many years living in exile.  The problem being that there are quite a few people running around who want to find Father Peter - including our heroine, Eva.

Eva owes her life to Father Peter, and cannot for the life of her understand why the man came back to England.  The problem is that England is not safe for Eva, nor for her young traveling companion, teenage Roger.  She takes one look at Jamie and knows her mission will not be easy.  This is a hard man.  A scary man.  And they both want the same thing - Father Peter.

Reading Defiant is an exercise in patience, and I suspect it's going to divide readers.  With Kennedy's previous two medievals, I strongly recommended them to not only medieval fans, but to general historical romance lovers as well.  Defiant is just as strong (if not stronger) in terms of "history" - but that said, it's a very medieval-y medieval.  There's a lot of medieval political intrigue, two-timing, back room dealing, and the author writes it out in drips and drabs, leaving a small trail of bread crumbs for the reader to follow.  This is good, because it saves us from a mind-numbing info-dump, but it's not so good for those readers (uh, like me) who might not be entirely up on their medieval history.  This was not a book I was immediately engaged in.  There are a lot of unanswered questions early on.  The author does get around to answering them, but it takes time.  Again, it saves from the info-dump, but readers are going to have to stick with it to get to the pay-off.

Now that being said, not all historical romances being published these days feature the depth, breadth, and sheer amount of "history" in them quite like Kennedy's work does.  Readers hungry, and at this point probably desperate, for actual "history" in their historical romances will probably be more than willing to exercise patience.  Yes, the author does tweak a few details to make her fictional story work, but this is still a book with a very strong sense of place (and lengthy author's notes at the end - which I lurve).

The romance is also a bit of an exercise in patience.  One has to remember, Eva and Jamie are at cross purposes for the vast majority of this book.  They both want the priest, but for totally different reasons.  Not to mention that Jamie is loyal to King John, a man Eva does not think highly of (to put it mildly).  So readers should expect quite a bit of animosity and bickering.  Now, it's certainly amusing animosity and bickering, but it also means it takes a good while for the reader to see, and buy into, a romance between these two people.  On that score, I found this to be a second half book.  The lack of truth telling, the lies by omission, after a while it gets to be very exhausting.  However by the halfway point, while not everything is out in the open, there's enough on the page to get me to believe a happy ending will work.

This wasn't an entirely easy read for me, and it's not my favorite of Kennedy's work, but I can still appreciate it for how special it is in a lot of ways.  Medieval fans should rejoice, and those of you looking for something different, something with some actual history to back it up?  Yeah, when was the last time you read about the Magna Carta in a romance novel?

Grade = B-