Gah! This was just painful. I'm so surprised that I managed to finish it. That probably had a lot to do with me having nothing else loaded to listen to on my drive to work and back. Plus, I liked the accents and visions of kilts (mmm, tasty.) This was about a brooding hero full of self-hatred for being a berserker and the ditzy heroine who would settle for no other to wipe his feet with her (until later and then it was nothing but mwah, mwah, mwah, mwah, “Oh, you have beautiful breasts,” and "Let me reach up your kilt and squeeze your..." mwah, mwah, mwah.)
The story starts with the girl's "da" and "ma" going off to visit relatives, leaving the heroine to choose (unknowingly, of course) between three hunky studs to wed, one of which is our dreary and whiney hero. Lots of hot come-ons by the other two and nothing but "No, Jillian, I'm an evil be-ZURRR-ker (so hard to emulate an accent, dammit!) You’ll only hate me when you find out what I am.” Said to himself, of course. Hardly any direct conversation took place between the H and h for two-thirds of the book except for “Go away, peahen” and “Why, Grim? Why?” over and over and over and over and… you get the picture.
I did drop a jaw when they finally got them some and it wasn’t three pages towards the end, but we still had to contend with the H’s nightmares of rejection and self-hatred as well as all the hoop jumping to ensure that the h never found out that he was an evil beast. Her having watched him single-handedly take out a village of bad guys five years before didn’t give her a clue. She was a whole fifty feet away, after all. In fact, she had to have someone practically put in writing with before and after photos of the H’s ancestors. (Sorry, portraits. This was set five hundred years ago. But they were soooo lifelike! Even the one’s engraved in the castle walls because the H’s genealogy is just that cool!)
We had our requisite berserker-saving-heroine-from-the-sneaky-and-evil-of the-three-suitors scene. And eff me if he hadn’t been the only hot one! Should’ve figured that. How the hot bad guy managed to get in the impenetrable fortress and out with a kicking and screaming heroine right under the noses of three berserkers is beyond me. So much for their super senses. It turned out ok, though, because apparently berserkers sprout skin like flying squirrels that allows them to escape bottomless pits. Haha! Don’t believe that. I made that up. He actually hit a ledge that was over five minutes of free-fall down into the pit the bad guy lured him into and sprung back out like superman in time to save the heroine. It was so touching how they looked lovingly into each other's eyes while the hero stood there in berserker-mode, holding the dripping, decapitated head of the bad guy. ~sigh~ (I told you it was painful.)
The scene tying everything up into a big happy bow included a visit from some characters obviously from a previous book about a time traveling wench and her hot, kilt wearing stud. What a kick to see how confused the current heroine got when she used all her twenty-first century lingo! (I hope you recognize sarcasm when you see it).
The sad part is, I have the next book in this series. I don’t think I can do it. What a waste of time and resources. Alas… But, hey, don’t let me stop you from reading this. There are seemingly hundreds of 4 and 5 star reviews just plastered all over the place. Though, it might be just because of the kilts.
