Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For the first 70-80% of the book, this was easily a 4-star book. The world was fascinating and revealed well. The main character was fierce, competent, interesting, and had reasonable weakpoints. The prose itself tended to get a little repetitive and frankly could have used a good editor (who looked at more than grammar) but was definitely cleaner and more polished than a lot of self-published books out there. In almost all aspects, the main character didn't do anything that wasn't consistent with her character, and she developed some friendships that felt real and believable as a motivation for staying in an enemy camp. Yes, occasionally she would wind up in the middle of a lecture that seemed poorly motivated and apparently had subtext I wasn't picking up on, but for the most part it kept me engaged. But then... the romance. Actually, back up... the whole barbarian warlord character! I have read characters where the love interest is a ruthless stone-faced assassin where I could kind of understand the appeal but this just completely baffled me. It's like you took a 1-dimensional character from a badly written smutty captive-fantasy novel and plopped him in the middle of a world-building fantasy with a badass honorable (slight Clint Eastwood-like) heroine. The only thing that seems to recommend the man is nice eyes, a very nice naked body, and the fact that he's too proud to rape her (but not too proud to fondle or otherwise sexually harass her or use his position of power to punish her both socially and physically for choosing not to sleep with him and threaten her friends if she tries to escape). Mmmm, dreamy. Just the kind of man a woman who's struggled her whole life to prove her competence in a misogynistic world would fall head over heels for. He does have nice eyes, after all. Now let's erase the ridiculously unlikely love story aspect of this and pretend like this was a novel about said badass female making a place for herself in the ranks of a barbarian horde. You know, discovering there's honor in the society (they do seem to be more gender-egalitarian in the ranks, horrible caveman-dragging-the-woman-by-the-hair mating rituals aside), seeing the benefits of a united lands, forming trusting relationships with team-members who listen to her and on whom she can rely, and establishing herself as a strategic gem despite being a "throwaway".This still gets completely undermined but the crazy, irrational behavior of the warlord and his closest allies. *Major spoilers here* Scout who was sent out to find missing warlord comes riding back into camp with said warlord passed out but alive- what do you do? Wrestle the scout to the ground and tie her to a chair for hours without explaining anything of course! But the youn decide she's a good guy, so what do you do? Force her into to a position she quite explicitly does not want and does not at all play to her often demonstrated strengths. Ah, but then you find out she's the girl everyone's been looking for and not a boy. Now you're going to be thrilled she stuck around and been doing nice things for you and saving your butt and those of your troops, and you should maybe be nice to her since you'd like her as an asset and to get into her pants without raping her. Ha! Who am I kidding? You should get mad at her and encourage everyone else to be angry at her while belittling her for not being fantastic at swordplay, which she has little experience in and never wanted to do. How in the world are we supposed to decide that maybe this society has some redeeming qualities that the normally principled heroine might point her loyalties to? While we're constantly told the warlord is better than most would be in the same position, his actual actions in the book have very few redeeming qualities. I wanted to like this book- I really did. But when I finished it I was left puzzled and the longer it sat the angrier I got at Shea and her choices. At this point I'm scared to pick up any of the author's other books, because I hate to see an awesome character abused by making choices that seem so far out of her established character.