Tome Thursday: The Barbarian's Vow

 

Hello everyone!

 

This is the last pre-Christmas book-related blog post that I'll be doing this calendar year, as next week begins the extravaganza that is running up until the holidays are over!

And as I promised you guys last week, it's time to wrap up the duology we started then.

Keira Andrews has ALSO promised another holiday romance coming around this time next week as well, so I'm pretty excited about that, I always am about the themed books she writes, because I normally fall in love with her characters and plots pretty easily.

I did with the Barbarian too, at least in the first book.

But I will warn you - and this is only fair - that I wasn't as enamored with this second one as I was with the first, and it'll probably show in the review.

Nothing against the writing (which is still superb), and everything against how the plot turns out, sadly! However I will say I enjoyed aspects of it, and at the very least there is a HEA in here as well.

So without further ado, let's just get right into it, shall we? The Barbarian's Vow has been waiting all week, after all.

Links to both the first book in this duology as well as some others that have a similar, historical fiction premise, can be found down at the bottom of the page, as usual.

But if we quickly recap Wed to the Barbarian: in Onan, a land made of four kingdoms (well, alright, there were four, then one got banned, and now there's four again as they're pushing to return to the fold), the Southern prince Jem is made to marry Northern one Cador, and they head on off to the North where Jem and Cador grow closer, but where a plot is eventually uncovered.

See, Northern children are ailing because the trees bearing a special fruit called sevel have all died out, and because these trees now only grow on the mainland, the idea is to use Jem as a bait and lure his mother, the Queen, into open war with the Western kingdom that controls the sevel fields. Cador of course changes his mind because he falls in love with his husband, but by then it's too late as Jem nearly dies from a different plot, and then decides he's heading home where he'll be safe.

This is where book two picks up, and, prepare yourselves, but Jem's litany of 'I will be safe as soon as I'm back home and my mother is clucking over me and taking care of everything' is only just beginning.

The idea is that they'll be sailing to the Southern kingdom where they'll explain the situation and ask for help, particularly for Cador's nephew who is nearing the brink of death each passing day. They send word ahead as soon as they land, but they're shocked by raging wildfires that have apparently been ravaging the mainland for weeks now because of the drought.

Jem, of course, has other plans, slipping away in the night so that he can get home first, tell his mother what happened, and then watch as she throws everybody in the dungeon to his own satisfaction, not something he shared with anyone else of course, and something he thinks about rather gleefully.

Unfortunately, he's as useless on his own as everyone and their mother actually implied, and gets himself lost, and once Cador clocks into the fact he's gone he rides ahead to the priests, who also haven't seen him, and they launch a search party that eventually does uncover him, making his way slowly over, but mostly still just lost.

He's now mad at Cador for starting the party to begin with, and looking for him, and a host of other things, but while tensions simmer between them there's a different problem that rises up: Treeve, prince of the Western kingdom, warns that his father is on the march and telling everyone that the Northerners started the fires, so most of the priests are out there trying to quell the unrest and attempt to persuade the people otherwise since, you know, the Northerners haven't even BEEN on the mainland in months.

The couple out of whack flee once the Western king arrives out of the blue, and end up getting themselves arrested in a village where they try to ask for some water, something Cador advises against, but Jem goes in anyway, and not only does he ask for water and declare himself, he says he wants Cador arrested.

Naturally, people just laugh at his face, throw him into the jail wagon right along with Cador who'd come out to defend Jem once he got attacked, and off they go to the royal dungeons, where Cador spends most of his time ensuring Jem feels safe enough to sleep.

 

His mother arrives in the middle of the night, and Jem springs them both even though by this point, with his litany of 'mom will make this all better and she'll lock them all up' I was thoroughly convinced he was going to leave Cador where he was, but they head on up to the castle and she explains that Cador's messenger did in fact arrive, then headed out again with the chieftain who'd been with them since Cador and Jem's marriage, to seek the Northern party on their way there.

 

This gives them some time to not only roleplay (that is, Cador and Jem roleplay to get some sexual frustration out) but to get to see Jem's home a little more, and it doesn't leave a favourable impression, let me tell you, as there's a lavish party, for one, and Cador is stuffed into the most ridiculous clothing then mostly just left there to be ogled, for the most part.

Luckily, however, the torment comes to an end as things begin converging with the arrival of the Northern delegation - and the healer letting slip, once he goes to treat the child, that no sevel in the kingdom can help him now, which then prompts Jem to demand answers from his mother.

Especially as, after the third or fourth time that the couple try to reconcile and get to the point of actually being on the cusp of it (after Cador discovers how Jem has been abusing his poor scalp, scratching it bloody in his PTSD episodes), Cador is arrested and dragged off to the castle.

Jem then notices the horse the Northern messenger used to ride away on, and his mother admits the Northerners are actually all there, but locked away in one of the towers, because rumours reached her that Jem was trying to run off from his husband, so she took matters into her own hands and arrested them all.

Jem is like, okay, but why wait to arrest the husband then? Well she was trying to figure out what was true - not that this mattered since most of the Northerners were ALREADY locked up. And on top of that she knows the sevel fruit is what causes the illness, because the priests had approached her once the Northerners wanted to return to the kingdom, and the scheme was hatched to begin with, as the Southerners could potentially mine the Northern mountains for the oil they need, Jem could live happily in his own little nook away from everybody, and the North would become a Southern fief.

Jem, finally realizing his mother is the biggest schemer of them all, can only gape at her and demand that she releases the Northern delegation, when news of an approaching Western force reaches them, pushing the issue to a breaking point as everybody scrambles.

They do in fact release the Northerners, who they kind of actually need as a show of force, and unfortunately the boy the Northerners brought with them also has to be mercifully helped along into death as there is no saving him, not anymore. Along with that and the West comes a torrential downpour that literally turns the roads into rivers and the valley lake rises, causing Jem to panic once one of his siblings tells him that Cador ran off to try and save the hatchling down in the aviary on the shore.

Riding out against his mother's wishes - apparently she forbade anyone from going after Cador and they just ... obeyed her? - Jem does in fact find Cador and they both slowly make their way up again, running into none other than the Western king, all alone on a small rise, shrilly ordering his troops to attack.

Said troops being both on another hill and very disinclined to try and attack uphill, it turns into a sort of discussion between the king, Jem, Cador, Treeve, and another of Jem's brothers, but the king is literally gone into the world of coocoo for coco puffs, so Jem's brother runs him through with his sword, and Treeve is basically declared king on the spot.

He and the brother then explain to Jem that they've been doing their own machinations, and wanted to separate Jem from Cador so that he could maybe marry Treeve instead, but Jem finally decides everyone's been doing too much plotting and says a hell naw, I'm just going to go home with my husband, alright?

He and Cador finally reconcile and leave to return to the Northern island, which will also be visited by the best agricultural minds in the land to plant the sevels again and ensure no child has to die anymore, and with Treeve on the Western throne there's hope for actual peace now among the people, as the rulers slowly convene again and block out the scheming priests, which thoroughly infuriates the priests but, good riddance to bad rubbish!

Cador and Jem also have their own life to live as they witness Treeve's confirmation as king some months later, because not only did Cador step down from the line of succession at home, but he lost his father as well, and he and Jem will be adopting a baby in the very near future. So in the end, all's well that ends well, and our characters (most of them) get a happily ever after - even if Jem's mother is still miffed she can't come mining in the Northern mountains like she wanted to!

But that's the end of the book, and the duology, and there you have it.

I'm going to be as nice as possible because I really, really like Andrews' work and I think I've read most of her books by now - and overall enjoyed them pretty much from start to finish!

But this one suffered from being the sequel. Like with Test of Valor which also took some ... interesting ... twists and I didn't enjoy them, this one would have been better off if it were not a continuation, and the story was a bit longer, but wrapped in just one book.

I have a few comments, and like I said I'm going to try and not be mean, because I think this was just a very simple miss. It might work for others!

But I disliked the regression in Jem's character, when he became so strong and independent in book 1. And granted, yes, we all want to maybe hide for a time and not deal with things, but his version was to go back to a spoiled little prince he never was to begin with, waiting for his mother to get things fixed ... then once we figure out his mom is the biggest schemer of all, he isn't even as outraged with her as he should have been, IMO.

 

He gets incredibly outraged when anyone else tries to meddle, but for some reason, mommy dearest gets away with it, and with the BIGGEST scheme of all!

 

Also, I didn't quite like how every time Jem and Cador were on the very brink of reconciling (it happens two or three times in the book), someone interrupted, and then they backtracked 5 steps. You don't. Have. To. Backtrack. That. Far. Again I feel it has mostly to do with this weird Jem regression. I get and applaud that it took time for him to get over what happened - it was nicely done in that he didn't just automatically forget - but I will admit, it dragged with how he backed up so much every time and had Cador start from practically scratch. It was, in my opinion, unnecessary.

The last thing I will mention is that I generally felt bad for Cador throughout the book. Whereas nothing in the North or its culture or people was specifically designed to embarrass Jem or humiliate him - they are a practical, hard people, it's simply their way of life, not DESIGNED to insult anybody - the stay with Jem's family felt like it was CATER MADE to humiliate and insult Cador, which I couldn't get behind. Maybe that's just the way I felt, but, it was the sensation I got from the words, and I didn't like it. Jem making him stay and suffer "for show" was uncalled for, too.

 

I'm not even going to touch on how the roleplay felt wrong on a lot of levels, because it mostly just felt like hiding from the obvious problem, when they could have used the time they spent in roleplay to ACTUALLY talk about it, and air everything out.

 

But anyway. Like I said, I think this one might have worked best as a shorted, chopped up version, merged with book 1, not a separate book. It unfortunately dragged for me, and Jem's character, who I fell in love with in book 1, I fell out of love with VERY fast here as he regressed into someone I didn't recognize and didn't want to know.

 

I did sort of enjoy all the twists and turns, but in the end there were so many I just felt that they were boxed in there for the drama, not for the actual effect, which is a bit of a shame. This is probably why the book was expanded into a second one, because the politics ate up quite a bit, and not all that well, whereas the love story could have been wrapped neatly earlier on.

 

So sadly, this one was a miss for me. Hopefully others find it better though, as the writer is genuinely one of my favourites!

xx

*image not mine

Wed to the Barbarian

The Station - Semper Fi